


Pretty Boy, Bad Boy

by Fudgyokra



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Arguing, Bets & Wagers, Drama, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Humor, Jealousy, M/M, Minor Violence, Moments of the following:, Multi, Past Relationship(s), Protectiveness, Resolved Sexual Tension, Romance, Self-Doubt, Sexual Content, Strippers & Strip Clubs, Suspicions, Underage Drinking, Wrestling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-17 06:44:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13653606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fudgyokra/pseuds/Fudgyokra
Summary: Of course, he thinks, it’s just his luck he’s got a hard-on for someone who stabbed him the first time they met.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is 90% JayTim, btw. BruDick is established and in the background.
> 
> I’m trying out this writing style for kicks… How well it goes is as much a surprise to me as it is to you!
> 
> I listened to plenty of music during the creation of this one, including a Jason and Roy party mix that I made specifically for this! If you’re really bored, it can be found on my Playmoss @ officialronanlynch under the name “Bad Boys.”
> 
> Also, this is my 150th fic on AO3! So, yay!

It begins, inexplicably, with a man rising from the dead.

Tim shuffles his feet to the edge of the rooftop and peers down at the street below, lit dim yellow from lights surrounded in fog. Gotham, as it usually did, smelled of smoke and debris. Nothing was unusual, nothing out of order, and yet the sense of something being wrong refused to leave him alone. He knows better than to ignore it, but The Bat is not one for wasting time on hunches without probable cause and has already deployed the hook from his grapple gun by the time Tim even thinks to argue his point.

He’s on the way down to the armored car himself when he feels it: A pick-up in the breeze, moving too quickly and in the wrong direction for it to be natural. For a second he pauses on the ledge of the next roof over, angling his foot ever-so-slightly with only the barest sound of crunching dirt beneath him. It’s stupid to stall and he knows it, but the bad feeling comes back two-fold and tells him without room for error that running would be even stupider.

Carefully, he unloads his escrima stick—a gift from Dick, who was far more graceful with it and yet only half as dangerous—and snaps it into its fully-unsheathed form. The menace of the weapon or the sound it makes as it springs out of what seems like thin air doesn’t perturb the shadow figure coming at him quick from the corner of his vision. It takes only a second for him to catch the perpetrator face-to-face, but even that was a second too long.

He finds himself on his back with a heavy-looking form hovering above him, and the only thing he can focus on is the glossy red of the hood the man wears, even though there’s a boot on his arm for one and a _gun aimed at his face_ for another. It’s such a shock to see the hood in person that it doesn’t occur to him that he should be more focused on not dying than on being enamored by the moonlight shining upon it, but goddamn had it ever been a dream of his to come upon a legend like this. He’s new to the game, hasn’t encountered Joker or any of Bruce’s other Big Bads yet, so this was a first.

The Red Hood seems a little less enthusiastic about their meeting. He puts the gun away and pulls Tim up by the collar with only one hand, until he’s dangling inches above the rooftop and gripping onto the man’s wrist for dear life now that his senses have returned to him and he remembers what he’s supposed to be doing.

Obviously, a kick to that intimidating, armored chest was a no-go, so Tim wedges the toe of his boot into the soft junction between shoulder and chest and makes the man drop him, where he can spring back to his feet and take hold of his escrima stick once again.

“Bat,” he says into the communicator, “there’s trouble up top.”

“I’m coming,” Bruce answers immediately. The moment the words filter through the little black earpiece, he feels something hard crack into it, sending him staggering a couple of steps with the impact and the violent crackling sound alike.

He hisses a curse and throws the broken speaker over the ledge, realigns his sight with Red Hood’s featureless face. “I kinda thought you were a myth,” he says, like it’s supposed to be a joke, and raises the point of the stick toward the man’s stomach. “Good to see the visage is still relevant.”

“Big words for such a little boy,” Hood says, his voice tinny and hostile.

Tim offers a single, flat, “Ha,” just in time for Batman to spring onto the scene with batarangs drawn, one slipped back between each of his knuckles. Red Hood executes an impressively acrobatic backflip for someone of his size and avoids all eight, sending them clattering uselessly to the street.

He speaks, but not to Bruce. In fact, he seems intent on ignoring him completely. “Lemme tell you something, kid.” The man produces a thin knife from somewhere in his sleeve and launches toward Tim with obvious intent. “You don’t wanna be another of Batman’s Boy Blunders.”

When the blade collides with his stick and flies out of reach, Hood continues battering him with curled fists instead. Tim does his best to ward them off until the stick, too, is knocked from his hands. There was no fighting a man like this muscle-to-muscle, so it was time to be smart. Or it was supposed to be, before there was another knife like the first, and they were already far too close together for that to be escapable.

Up close, Tim can see the whites of the domino mask behind the hollow holes in the hood, and the familiarity of the fabric makes his pupils shrink. He can’t quite put his finger on it, but—

“Jason,” Bruce says all of the sudden, scarily quiet, with none of his usual menace. It sounded like a revelation, maybe like a prayer, and it was far scarier than Batman’s grumble of justice. It was because it sounded so _sure,_ and Tim knew in an instant that he couldn’t have been wrong.

Hood turns around to face him, finally. He leaves the knife embedded beneath Tim’s ribcage and reaches for the gun again, but before he can curl his gloved fingers around it, there’s a weight on his back. Tim knows he’s surprised him with his speed or his ability to recover, one, because it actually makes him cry out in alarm and gives Bruce enough time to get a rope around one of the man’s calves. It doesn’t knock him off his feet, but it does serve to piss him off more than he already was.

“Not so happy to see me, huh?” he says to Bruce, stepping on the rope and slicing it apart as if it were nothing instead of the dense, hard-to-damage material of which it really was comprised. “Don’t worry, the feeling’s mutual.”

“Jason,” Bruce tries again, going at his front with fists raised. “What happened to you?”

“What happened to me?” Jason barks an unfriendly laugh and gets in a hard kick at Bruce’s side. Armored though he was, it was powerful enough to knock him sideways with a measure less of breath than he had before. “You know real fuckin’ well what happened to me!”

Tim swipes at his feet and succeeds in knocking him down this time, but soon after, there’s a gloved hand tight around his ankle yanking him across the concrete without mercy. After that, for all intents and purposes, he’s a rag doll in Jason’s grip, pressed tightly against his chest with the muzzle of a gun cold against his temple.

“Jeez, Bruce,” Jason says, looking down a fraction, “you couldn’t’ve replaced me with someone a little less scrawny? He needs a haircut, too, but hey—”

In the middle of his commentary, Tim catches him off guard again with the aid of Batman’s spray adhesive, one of the only weapons he has on hand but is ultimately useful. For a second, Jason’s foot is glued to the ground and Tim can worm his way out of his grip while he’s distracted. To his surprise, upon breaking the heavy seal with alarming strength and only minimal damage to his boot, Jason laughs. It makes Tim’s blood run cold, but not quite as handily as taking off the hood did.

He didn’t expect to get a look at Jason’s face, especially not like this, but it was hard to look away. Handsome, yes, but so _cruel._ Icy eyes glowing with hatred, mouth curled into a snarl, nose wrinkled with the effort it took to put forth such disdain. Under it all, though, he was hardly older than Tim. Twenty, maybe. Tim found himself half wrapped up in the despair of it all and half mesmerized by the way Jason grinned at him when he caught him staring.

“No hard feelings about the stabbing, huh, Replacement?”

It takes Tim a second to realize what he meant, and by then it was too late to close his mouth.

“And _you_ ,” Jason says with an abrupt change in tone as he narrows those horrible, glowing eyes at Bruce. “You’d better stay out of my way or watch your back.”

“We were doing our nightly patrol,” Bruce replies curtly. “You’re the one in our way.”

Tim grimaces at the sudden pang in his ribs and presses his palm to the wound. He can’t listen to them argue all night—not when he was dizzy with blood loss and wonderment both. “Bat,” he chokes out. “Car.”

Bruce opens his mouth, but whatever he’s about to say, Jason interrupts in the middle of affixing his hood. “You heard me, Batman. Leave my part of the city alone and everything’ll be fine.”

“Robin, wait,” Bruce says, and it takes all of them a moment to realize he was speaking to Jason.

The silence wanes into a dismal scoff on Red Hood’s part, and before anyone else can make a move, he’d leapt from the rooftop and disappeared, leaving Bruce behind with his mistakes and Tim wondering if he counted as one of them.

//

“You mean he’s _back?_ As in, alive?” Dick asks, and his enthusiasm is already too much for Tim to handle after what happened. Still, he grits his teeth through the pain of Alfred finishing up the stitches and offers a nod to the affirmative. Dick blows a puff of air through parted lips and runs a hand through his hair. From where he sits in the Batcomputer’s well-worn office chair, he looks from Tim to Bruce and then back again. “You saw him?” he urges, managing to keep the conversation going well after Tim thought it had ended.

“Yes, we did,” Bruce answers in his stead.

“When I heard the news about Red Hood coming back to Gotham, I’m sorry to say I mistook it for a hoax,” Alfred offers as he snips the final thread and ties it off with a conclusive hum. Tim watches him peel off the latex gloves and deposit them in a nearby trash bin before he thinks to add his input.

“I did too, at first,” he admits, “but the more I heard about it, the less convinced I was that it was some sort of scheme.”

“I couldn’t help but think it was perfect timing,” Bruce says somewhat cryptically, before releasing too many emotions into one lone sigh. From his chair, Dick knits his brows together in concern but for once says nothing.

The silence that falls upon them only rattles Tim’s curiosity, and so, despite the visible warning signs, he asks, “Perfect timing for what, exactly?”

Dick catches his lip between his teeth, but Bruce seems unperturbed by the question. “With rumors swelling about Ra’s Al Ghul’s ‘fountain of youth’ and the sudden reappearance of a dead foe, I began to wonder if it wasn’t a coincidence. The body would’ve had to have been nearby…”

“But, sir,” Alfred interjects, “you _saw_ Master Jason’s body.”

“I don’t know how it happened or why, Alfred,” Bruce says, and he’s beginning to sound like he hasn’t slept in years, with each breath a new battle. “I’m just saying it was a gut instinct. I knew it was him. He looked so angry, Al. It made him look so different, but it was him. I saw his face.”

Dick offers another soft sigh in Bruce’s direction, seemingly lost in the thought of Jason’s face—the face of the underling he never quite got to have—or at least swept up in the current of Bruce’s reverie. With him, it was always hard to tell.

“He _was_ angry,” Tim says, more to himself than anyone else, but with the rest of them looking at him now, he supposes he ought to explain himself. “He called me… ‘Replacement.’ He thinks I took his spot.” He looks up, surveys the surprise in Dick’s eyes, the grudging confirmation in Bruce’s. It was something he already knew, but didn’t want to say. “Either he’s angry or he’s…” Tim blinks, considers, tries again: “He’s angry because he feels thrown away, Bruce.”

Whatever the projected outcomes he expected, Bruce’s wounded snarl was lower on the list, as were his following words. “He tried to kill you, Tim.” And before anyone could offer more, he stands with a dramatic wave of his cape and lays both palms flat on his desk. “Now, if you’ll all excuse me, I have work to do.”

//

Sometimes, like tonight, Tim was afraid to fall asleep. Things tended to lurk on the fringes of his dreams, right where fantasy met reality, and they had the power to keep him up for days. This time, it was a face; a freckled face with cold, blue eyes and a serious mouth drawn into a sneer. It held the malice of a nightmare, but when Tim reaches out for Jason’s half-formed apparition in his dazed state, the only feeling he gets is curiosity. Not something to be feared, but something to be learned from.

But then the apparition bares its teeth and sinks its claws into Tim’s neck, and his eyes shoot open in tandem with the stall in his breath. For a long time, he sits in the darkness of his bedroom, spine against the headboard, one leg dangling off the mattress, and simply _thinks_.

//

There are subsequent run-ins, some of them with fruitful conversation but most without. Tim hangs behind and studies them each time. Bruce has been bringing Nightwing with him, and the sight of the elder Boy Wonder seems to soften Jason up, if only a little. It takes time, but eventually he no longer greets them with guns drawn.

He calls him “Replacement” and “Prettyboy” so much that Tim wonders for a while whether he actually knows his name.

//

He does. It’s in between banter edging on arguing that he says it, and it isn’t even spoken to Tim but to Bruce. “You need to make Tim cut his hair,” he complains. “For god’s sake.”

Jason mentions the hair quite a bit, actually. Tim learns after the first couple of times that he doesn’t really mean it, if the teasing twinkle in his eye says anything.

//

Against all odds, Alfred would say with eyes toward the ceiling and patience thinner than his hair, Bruce has managed to cause yet another fallout.

Tim doesn’t know what was said, but it had something to do with The Joker, and even Dick refused to fill him in on what happened. All he knows is that the next time they all patrol together, the usually touchy-feely Nightwing was well-spaced from them, and Bruce, stubborn as he was, wouldn’t let up no matter how cold the silence.

It’s so bad that Dick returns to Blüdhaven for a few days of self-imposed solitary confinement, and Tim can feel the palpable remorse in the air whenever Bruce drifts, ghost-like, through the mansion halls. By the time Dick rolls back around, things have smoothed over but with no mention of Jason, whose name gets swept to the wind with less care than Tim might have liked.

He’s anxiously sucking down his third cup of coffee of the morning when the doorbell rings, and when he’s the first one to the door he isn’t surprised. He isn’t sure how long he stands in front of it just staring at the translucent glass and the blurry figure on the other side.

Dick wanders in wearing Bruce’s silk bath robe with his hair sticking up every which way, and Bruce follows closely behind, dressed disturbingly immaculate for the early hour. “Who’s that?” the former vocalizes through a yawn. Bruce obviously hasn’t been sleeping, so Tim chalks Dick’s weariness up to something he’d rather not think about and turns the handle with bated breath.

On the other side stands Jason, looking for the life of him like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world. He’s dressed casually in jeans and a red hoodie, and up close it’s even more obvious to Tim than before that he’s going through turmoil of his own behind closed curtains somewhere out there in Gotham’s maze of ill repute.

Bruce stares. Dick doesn’t even bother to tie his robe more tightly around him before he catches Jason off guard with a hug that isn’t returned but is at least tolerated, as Jason rolls his eyes and tries hard not to meet Dick’s now-teary ones.

With a hoarse, disbelieving laugh, Dick steps back from the entryway and slicks a hand over his hair. It was a common gesture of surprise, but this time it's shakier than normal. “It’s nice to see you, Jason,” he says after a long silence.

“Yeah,” replies Jason, tersely. He shuffles a boot absently and withdraws a cigarette carton from the pocket of his hoodie.

“Why are you here?” Bruce asks. Immediately, Jason snorts in a way that could only mean he expected the very question.

“Nice to see you too, Bruce,” he says, and tucks the carton away to lift a lone cigarette to his mouth. Alfred joins them in time to catch them staring as Jason cups the flame of his gas station lighter between his palms and lights the stick between his lips.

His greeting is courteous and normal, as if nothing had ever changed. “You’re welcome inside, Master Jason,” he adds, brushing the rest of them aside to make his point.

“Of course!” Dick all but chirps, dragging a hand through his hair more animatedly this time. “Here, y’know what? Lemme—lemme go change, and I’ll find us something to do!” He speeds away without room for argument, as he tends to do, and Bruce exchanges a look with Alfred that did not go unnoticed by either Tim or Jason.

With a terse smile and a promise of fresh coffee, the butler steps away from the group and heads into the kitchen, where Tim automatically begins to follow before he remembers why he’s standing there in the first place.

“It’s… Jason, it _is_ nice to see you again,” Bruce says at length, but it’s clear he’s struggling with the words. They’re not quite lies, though, and that’s a start, Tim thinks.

As eloquently as before, Jason mumbles a “Yeah” around the filter of his cigarette and a cloud of smoke.

“Not in the house,” Bruce says.

“Up yours,” Jason says.

“Alfred will be very upset with you,” Bruce says.

Jason stubs the cigarette out in a planter by the door and finally steps inside.

Minutes of awkward, tense silence give way to excitable chatter upon Dick’s return, and despite all odds he manages to look perfectly polished even though he was only gone for five minutes at most. “So, Jay,” he begins conversationally, like they’d never been apart. Instead of what Tim expects, Jason offers a small smile at the familiarity. “What brings you here, anyway? I thought, maybe…” He stops himself to give a smile that more closely resembles a grimace but completes the thought, anyway. “I thought you wouldn’t wanna see us anymore after the run-in with Joker.”

“You had nothing to do with that,” Jason points out, and it doesn’t take a detective to figure out that the unsaid implicates Bruce being the problem, not Dick.

Bruce does not take it well. He smiles, but it’s a Wayne-Brand smile: The kind that makes business moguls keep on in their drunken ramblings and wealthy women placated in his less-than-attentive presence. Jason might’ve been gone for a while, but he remembers this smile perfectly well.

Before things can go even further south, Tim steps in with an admittance. “I invited him.” He looks between Bruce and Jason with hesitance, but puffs up a little at Dick’s beaming face of encouragement. “I just… I think things have gotten a little ridiculous between all of us."

Adding fuel to the fire, Jason smirks and says, “All of us. Right. What’s your name again, Prettyboy?” But Tim doesn’t take it to heart and instead rolls his eyes, annoyed.

“Actually, Dick,” he says meaningfully, lifting a brow in the man’s direction. “I was thinking Jason and I could hash things out privately, before we involve everyone else.”

There is an obvious disagreement bubbling to the surface on the tip of Bruce’s tongue, but Dick gets the hint and dials the charm up to eleven. “Come on, B,” he says sweetly, draping an arm around the man’s shoulders and sidling close. “I want ice cream for breakfast, anyway.”

“Dick…” Bruce says, voice a warning.

“Bruce,” Dick answers pleasantly. The impending kiss on Bruce’s jaw has the argument sealed before it even finds purchase, and Tim's never been more grateful for Grayson’s inexorable sex appeal than he is in that moment.

Jason looks only mildly put-off by this display even though their relationship was a fairly new development, which says more about the inevitability than it did about Jason’s potential distaste for PDA, though Tim’s hypothesis lists this as another contributing factor to his stand-offish-ness.

“Do you guys want anything?” Dick asks, merely as preamble; the chances of Bruce allowing anything dripping and sugary in the Batmobile were slim to none. “’Cause if not, we’re heading out now.”

“We’re fine,” Tim says.

At the same time, Jason says, “Bring me back a triple fudge scoop.”

Dick snorts and shoves a dismal-looking Bruce through the door. For the barest of moments, his smile slackens and he regards Jason seriously from over his shoulder. “It’s good to have you back, Jay,” he says, and then shuts the door before Jason can even think to act repulsed by the sentiment.

There’s a long silence, but luckily Alfred breaks it before Jason can just give up and go home, because Tim doesn’t have a backup plan laid out for that. As it often did, the word “coffee” brings joy to his life, and he pads into the kitchen with high hopes for a fourth cup, only to find that Alfred has made decaf in his time of need.

Jason shuffles things around in the cabinets and withdraws a mug in under a minute. After pouring himself a cupful, he finally decides to look at Tim. “If you’re expecting an apology for the whole stabbing incident, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.”

“I, uh,” Tim says eloquently, before shaking his head. “No, I just wanted to talk.”

They wander into the foyer, bedecked in white furniture in an attempt to look proper and inviting. Instead, it comes off more like pompous grandeur without purpose, which pretty much sums up the entirety of Wayne Manor. Jason appears to share the sentiment, because he surveys a gold-trimmed living chair and snorts. Beside it sits a glass end table with a Fabergé egg resting daintily on top, and he flicks it with just enough force to knock it askew, which nearly gives Tim a heart attack.

“Think the old man will notice if I just, like, took this?” he asks, and Tim earnestly can’t tell whether it was a joke.

“Err, no idea.” He does little more than watch Jason walk around and reminisce for a while, until the gentle look of nostalgia crumbles from his face, leaving behind a surliness that sets off alarm bells in Tim’s head. Quickly, he intervenes with the big bomb: “I invited you here for a reason.”

Jason smiles knowingly at him, and Tim feels bizarrely like a mouse under a cat’s scrutinizing gaze. “Yeah, to talk,” the former says. “Or was I misinformed?”

“Very,” Tim answers with a cheeky grin of his own that makes Jason’s fall right from his lips. He sets his mug down on the nearby mantle and crosses his huge arms over his equally huge chest. It makes what Tim’s about to suggest seem that much more ridiculous, but he reminds himself that it was just a means to an end and charges onward. “I want a wrestling match. You and me, one on one.”

Jason caws out a laugh so abrupt that Tim almost jumps when he hears it, then shakes his head as if that would clear it away. When he looks back down at him, the amusement in his eyes is unmistakable. “No offense, but I’d kick your ass in ten seconds on a bad day.”

“You willing to bet on it?” Tim’s practiced this part; he doesn’t betray his nerves, doesn’t break eye contact, only leans against the wall with one corner of his mouth lifted in haughty reserve and waits for Jason to take the bait.

“Unless you’re willing to lose an arm, I—”

“If I win, you kiss me.”

Jason chokes on his words, and it makes Tim feel momentarily powerful. Then, just as suddenly, the ego returns with another thin smile and Jason says, “All right. And if I win—which I will—then I get to take a batarang with me when I leave.”

Tim furrows his brows. “Why?”

He should’ve seen the answer coming, really, but Jason was masterful at making you focus on his expressions rather than his words, and so when he says, “Because it’ll piss Bruce the hell off, and you get blamed for it,” Tim withers for a second. Bruce _would_ be furious if he found out Jason made off with one of his weapons, and Tim can’t imagine that the punishment for allowing it to happen would be light.

But what Tim lacks in risk-analysis he makes up for in self-confidence, so he extends a hand toward the other man and lifts his brows in invitation. Jason, for his part, makes a face like he’s trying not to laugh and accepts the handshake with a much firmer grip than necessary. “All right, Tim,” he says, and Tim forgets who that is for a moment because Jason doesn’t normally _call_ him that. “Show me what you got.”

//

Whereas Jason fights with raw strength, Tim fights with cunning and wit. They seem to balance each other out this way. Jason’s got him pinned so many times in the blink of an eye that Tim can hardly believe he’s human, but by the same token he’s managed to get out of every single one thus far, which befuddles Jason.

Tim thought it was going to be an easy task, but he finds he’s sorely mistaken. Twenty minutes later, they’re still going at it, practically out of breath and perhaps only a bruise or two shy of an assault case. He thinks he ought to have a trump card, but before he can gather the necessary intel to parse one out, Jason’s already played his.

It happens in a heartbeat, but when it does, Tim is down for good. One moment they’re throwing each other around and the next Jason kisses him square on the mouth and it’s like hitting a button in his brain. He shuts down entirely for the briefest of moments, but it’s long enough; while Jason’s grinning mischievously down at him, Tim hears something click and looks up to find that his wrist has been securely cuffed to a nearby pipe. He doesn’t want to know when or where Jason acquired the handcuffs.

“That,” he pants, “is not fair.”

Jason’s victorious expression only further illuminates. “Playing fair wasn’t part of the agreement.” With that, he shoots to his feet and hops onto the elevator. “Seeya around sometime, Prettyboy,” he says with finality, and when he disappears into the upper story, Tim can only thunk his head back against the floor and heave a deep sigh.

_Goddammit._

It takes him ten minutes to wrangle himself free of the lousy cuffs, and by then Jason is already long gone. He was kind enough to lock the door behind him, at least, but when Tim surveys Bruce’s inventory with suspicion, he finds that there is, indeed, one batarang missing from the collection. Great. Bruce was going to give him hell.

As if on cue, there’s a knock at the door, and Alfred beats him to it by mere seconds with a look of muted amusement. Tim suspects it isn’t from making it to the door first.

“Hey, Timmy, uh…” Dick starts saying something to him that he doesn’t hear because Bruce’s harsh expression is practically ten times louder. It takes him a second to realize that Dick has asked him a question, and that he probably ought to answer if he wants to look innocent.

“Err, what?” he says intelligently.

Dick smiles. Bruce stalks off with an unknown stick up his ass. The former offers explanation by way of a pointed index finger, which Tim follows to one of the worse bruises above his collarbone and winces. “Yeah, I challenged him to a wrestling match,” he admits.

Dick laughs. “Dude, I commend your effort, but I could’ve told you he was gonna kick your ass.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Tim says with a dramatic roll of his eyes.

“I’m right, though, aren’t I?” he asks with a smirk like he’d personally gained something from Tim’s failure. “It’s all right, Tim-Tam. We all lose a couple battles.”

It’s worth every second it takes to drag out his tracking device to see the way Dick’s eyes go wide, but he throws salt in the wound anyway and, with a smirk, says, “No… I’m pretty sure I won this one.”

On the tracker’s screen, the little red dot was on the move, faithfully cataloguing Jason’s path.

Dick snatches the tracking device out of his hands and makes a perfect ‘o’ shape with his mouth. “Bruce!” he calls, slapping a hand down on Tim’s already-sore shoulder with obliviously high levels of excitement. “Now’s our chance to find where Jason’s been squatting in Gotham!”

Bruce strides purposefully back into the room and snatches the tracker from Dick as he’d done to Tim before. Though there’s no outward change in expression, Tim has learned to pick up on the little things that mean Bruce is pleased. For one thing, he’s no longer ambling about but directing attention with brief, sharp movements, as he does when he commands them to follow him to the cave and suit up.

“Good job, Tim,” Dick praises, and, for once, Tim allows him to ruffle his hair without complaint.

They leave in the Batmobile, but eventually the streets become so narrow and congested that they must continue their pursuit on foot. It takes longer than it should have for them to begin getting suspicious, yet they continued searching, even when the crowds begin thinning and the route starts taking them through alleyways and past the trash yard on the outskirts.

“It says we’re close…” Dick says when they’re nearing what must be the grimiest alleyway in the entire city.

“Oh, boy,” Tim mumbles dejectedly.

The trio finds the tracker bug glued to the brick wall with a wad of chewing gum and a note beneath it. Dick plucks it off with thumb and forefinger, watching the gum strand stretch and break with a grimace.

Bruce grunts. Dick takes that as an unspoken cue to read the note aloud. “Replacement: I’m not as stupid as you think I am. P.S., you kiss like a Bat.”

Tim blanches at the same instant Dick explodes in a fit of laughter. “You _kissed_ him?” he crows, holding his sides with the gummy note still clenched in one fist.

“I did not!” he hollers back defensively, going from white to pink to red with alarming speed as Dick keeps on laughing and Bruce only watches, unamused.

“Why would he say that if you didn’t?”

“Because he’s a—” Tim flounders for a word and watches Dick’s grin turn wicked.

“He’s what, Tim? A dick? Is that what you were gonna say?”

“You know what?” Tim says, exasperated, and that’s when Bruce puts a hand out and declares that to be enough. Obviously, he’s in no mood to argue, so Tim follows wordlessly and lets the tittering Nightwing come after, ignoring him to the best of his abilities as the three of them march their way back to the car, and eventually all the way back home.


	2. Chapter 2

He kissed _me,_ Tim thinks with a huff of irritation. Not like that wasn’t what he was asking for in the first place, but… He huffs again, more vehemently this time, as he’s stripping down for his shower. It was to get information, but telling Dick or Bruce that would be pointless, so he just lets the thought stew self-righteously in his head until the hot water rains down on him and washes everything away in a pool of relief.

He washes off and leans back against the wall to enjoy the spray for a while, and before the intelligent part of his brain can combat the sensory part, he’s gotten a hand around himself and is sighing into the haze of steam as he fools around, nothing serious, nothing condemning. But it’s the fact that he’s thinking about it that way that has him worrying; he’s way too damned smart to pretend not to know what’s going on here.

Still, he pushes away the thoughts prickling at the back of his mind and thinks of something, someone, anything, anyone. He’s managed to conjure up some semi-distorted image of a sharp jawline (could’ve been Kon, could’ve been Stephanie, he reasoned) before he realizes he’s already knee-deep in a fantasy and is tingling at the toes to get on with it.

It usually doesn’t happen so _fast,_ but all he can think about in his blurry, worn-out daydreaming is being pinned _,_ like he’s some kind of glutton for punishment. It’s the idea of heavy muscle weighing him down, the sensation of being beaten at something he should be the best at. It’s humiliating, in a way, but his hand’s moving faster before he can stop it and by the time he comes to terms with the fact he’s definitely thinking about Jason kissing him, he’s too far gone to quit now. He just grunts at his inefficacious thought processes and finishes himself off to the prospect of it having gone farther, the idea of having those hands holding him down by the wrists, or maybe by the back of the neck, forcing his head down into the pillows. He cums with gasp and a shudder, feeling equal parts sated and disgusting.

Of course, he thinks, it’s just his luck he’s got a hard-on for someone who _stabbed_ him the first time they met.

He turns the water off, gropes blindly for the towel he’d set out and wraps it around his waist before he pulls himself to his bedroom and collapses onto the mattress with a sigh of despair. Just another day in the life of Timothy Drake.

//

He slugs through another hour of online school, then, afterwards, finds himself bored out of his wits with no intention of sleeping. Bruce and Dick are probably banging somewhere in the mansion and he can’t bring himself to look and find out, so he pulls on a jacket and excuses himself from the manor without a word to anyone.

It shouldn’t matter since he’s eighteen and perfectly capable of handling himself, but with all the drama going on he can’t help but feel like Bruce will end up mad at him anyway. Perhaps he should’ve said something to Alfred on the way out, but it’s too late because he’s already halfway to the public library and is certainly not walking all the way back.

The idea seems so wholly innocent until he finds himself unsatisfied by the image of the stucco building and walks right past, unsure of where he’s going until he winds up in the worse part of town. It was an accident to wander into Red Hood’s territory, he’d say if anyone asked.

But no one would if Gotham could help it, because the first thing that happens when he hits the alley in which Jason had previously abandoned his tracker is that someone grabs him from behind and shoves him against the brick. Before he knows it, there’s a gun in his face and a very uncivil-looking man demanding money from him.

Tim knows better than to pick a fight without his toys, so he hands the wallet over and hopes that’ll be the end of it, but when it isn’t, he realizes he’s made a very poor choice coming out here, indeed. The man gets a handful of his hair—and jeez, maybe he really _does_ need to get that cut—and yanks his head up a couple of inches to size him up. Tim doesn’t like the look in his eyes, and so he gathers his hands into fists at his waist and gets ready to pick his battles, but that’s when something hard and metal collides with the man’s head and knocks him to the ground with a pained grunt.

He doesn’t notice he’s been holding his breath until he lets it out in a relieved pant at the sight of Jason, who doesn’t look nearly so happy to see him. “Jesus, Replacement,” he snaps, and the sound of crunching footfalls tells Tim that Jason is coming closer while he occupies himself staring at the bloody dent in the stranger’s head and at the incriminating trash can lid lying some feet away. “What the fuck are you doing out here?” he’s asking, but Tim is still trying to swallow the pill of what the look in that man’s eyes meant, and why he thought he should’ve come out here in the first place.

As it stands, Jason is occupying the same sort of headspace. “Do you have any idea what the creeps around here do to pretty guys like you?” He grabs Tim’s wrist and this, finally, snaps him out of his reverie. “Why are you here?”

There wasn’t a good answer to that, not really, so he says, “Got lost,” and hopes that works.

It doesn’t. Jason narrows his eyes and lets him go, takes a step back and crosses his arms to survey him. Tim doesn’t like it and says so.

“Looking at you like what?” Jason asks. Tim manages a sneer that obviously takes the other off guard, because he lifts his eyebrows with interest.

“Like I’m a stupid kid,” he answers, and the moment he’s said it he regrets it.

Jason’s tough persona crumbles into a series of breathy chuckles, leaving Tim to wonder what the hell is so funny until Jason catches him by the elbow and drags him out of the alley. “Come on,” he says, and that explains nothing.

“Come on where?” He’s not really expecting an answer, so he finds himself surprised when Jason humors him and looks at him with eyes alight.

“Listen, I got a deal for you, since you came all this way to see me.” Tim thinks about arguing, but that would be pointless and he’s pretty sure Jason could tell if he were lying, so he stays quiet while the other man prattles on. “If you put on, like, a blindfold or something, I’ll take you to my safehouse. Y’know, since you wanna see it so bad you bugged me last time.”

Tim grunts out a stupidly simple, “Sorry.”

Jason laughs again. “You’re not the first to do it and you won’t be the last.” He puts a hand on his hip and rests his weight on one broad leg, presumably waiting for a response.

This time, it’s Tim’s turn to laugh. It isn’t much of one, just a hollow little snort, but when Jason looks at him in confusion, Tim explains. “Yeah, uh-huh. When I’m totally blind and you lead me into a dumpster or something…” He doesn’t finish the thought and doesn’t have to, because Jason’s already failing to hide a grin.

“I wouldn’t do that,” he lies, and the moment Tim gives him his best ‘are-you-kidding-me’ look, he breaks down again. “Okay, I was totally going to do that. It was gonna be hilarious. Like, I’m picturing your face right now and—oh, man.”

Tim rolls his eyes. Jason sobers. “But I _was_ gonna bring you to my place after. For real.”

“I would have just assumed the dumpster was Casa de Todd.”

“Not far from it,” Jason jokes, and this gets Tim to crack a smile. “Now come on. You really don’t wanna be standing around down here all dolled up like that.”

“Dolled up?” Tim asks, offended. He’s about to say something else when Jason gathers him against his hip, unhooks his grapple gun, and aims it at a nearby rooftop. Though he’s quite used to rushing through the air, the surprise of it renders him breathless for a few seconds after they land on the roof, and it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that Jason’s hand is still on his waist, not at _all._

“I’m just messing with you, man,” Jason says to him.

It takes a second to compute, and by then all Tim can think to say is, “Why are you carrying your grapple gun in your casual clothes?”

“Because this place is a hellhole.”

Tim gathers that that’s all he’s gonna get, so he sits down on the fading gray shingles and gets comfortable. Beside him, Jason sits as well, drawing his knees to his chest and lighting a cigarette that Tim didn’t ever see him grab.

They sit in silence for a while until Tim decides he trusts Jason not to kill him when he asks his next question. What comes out is, “What happened to you?” What he’d meant to say was something closer to “Are you okay?” but he’s sure he’s not going to get as fruitful an answer to that one.

Jason sighs out a cloud of smoke. “I died,” he says, brief and to-the-point, “and then I came back.”

“How?”

“No idea.”

“Okay, then _why?_ ”

“To haunt Gotham.”

The silence returns, but something about it has gone sour this time around. While Jason smokes, Tim considers all the things that have brought them to this point and redesigns his course of conversation. Carefully, or perhaps not, he asks, “Why do you hate Bruce so much?”

Jason narrows his eyes at the sky but doesn’t answer for a long time. By the time he does, he’s made his way through his first cigarette, withdraws another, and lights it between cupped palms. Tim is getting frightfully comfortable with the smell of Marlboro’s, despite the fact they haven’t spent all that much time together.

“Well,” the man starts at last, on the tail end of a long sigh, “the truth is, I don’t.”

“You don’t?”

“Nah. I was _mad_. There’s a difference. He wants to play it like he’s so high and mighty because he doesn’t kill, but he lets that sack of shit kill as much as he wants and keeps coming back to _save_ him.”

So, this must have been what the conversation involving The Joker had been about, Tim thinks, pursing his lips. “I see what you mean, but it isn’t… It’s more complicated than that, Jason.”

“I’m not asking him to become a murderer,” Jason says, and his words sound heavier than before. “I just thought that maybe he’d… Let him die. Let someone else deal with him. He doesn’t _have_ to kill him, he just…”

“Just what?” Tim pries, giving him a pointed look. “Let _you_ kill Joker? Let you risk your life like that and hope that the clown’s posse doesn’t come for your head?”

“It would be worth it,” Jason argues.

“It would not,” Tim says right back.

Jason throws a hand up in a dramatic gesture. “Says who? You? You don’t know the first damn thing about me.”

“Maybe not me,” Tim says, pushing his hair back in exasperation, “but I know that Bruce wouldn’t want that.”

Then Jason’s face falls into something expressionless, and he settles back on his haunches like a scorned dog. He looks back out at the sky, presses his lips together in thought, and then offers a hum that Tim can make no meaning of. Finally, he says, “He hates me, Tim.”

“Does that hurt you?” Tim asks.

Jason dodges the question. “I didn’t mean for things to end up like this, you know. I just wanted to make him see what he meant to me. How I felt about what he did. What he’s been allowing to go on, even after everything.”

He’s beginning to sound awfully sad now, and Tim doesn’t know how to deal with that, so he interjects with a quick, “I don’t think Bruce hates you, Jason.” When those eyes meet his, he fumbles for a second, but then remembers why he’s here and eases into a self-imposed calm. It might have been artificial, but Jason didn’t seem to be able to tell the difference. Or, if he did, he didn’t comment. “I will admit, though, that he does seem angry when he talks about you. I know deep down he misses you… But still, when he talks about you, it seems like he’s trying to… I dunno, demonize you.”

“Why don’t you listen to him?” Jason asks, and it doesn’t sound like a joke or a jab but an honest question. “Why didn’t you stay away from me? I _stabbed_ you, for Christ’s sake. Did you ever stop to think that maybe Bruce is right about me?”

He had, but that wasn’t the _point._ With all the thoughts rattling around in his head, he couldn’t seem to make this easy on himself, but the last thing he wanted to do was leave Jason hanging and so, with a churning mix of fear and adrenaline, he tells the truth. “I didn’t want to stay away from you. From the moment you took the hood off, I pretty much knew I was done for. It’s like seeing the face of God. You don’t walk away from that.”

Jason opens his mouth, closes it again, looks away.

“It’s not just that, though,” Tim says, grinding himself further into the dirt. “It’s like there’s this sense of danger you’ve got about you. It’s one of the reasons I agreed to become what I am in the first place—you know, the thrill, the rush. It’s all very alluring, but _you_ … It’s the same but different, somehow.” He scoffs, turns his eyes skyward. “That doesn’t make any sense, but there it is.”

There’s no sign that Jason’s going to say anything else, so Tim stands, shrugs as though he hasn’t just poured out the most terrifying thing he’s ever felt out loud, and begins to assess which way down would be safest.

“Here,” Jason says, tossing him the grapple gun. “I’ve got another.”

Tim thanks him, aims the gun, lowers it. “See you around,” he says.

“Yeah,” Jason says.

And Tim hops from the rooftop, tearing through the city on a string and feeling far more normal doing it than he had having an honest-to-god human conversation. On the bright side, he feels as though he can finally lie down without his thoughts trying to strangle him in his sleep. He supposes the day wasn’t an entire waste, after all.

//

Alfred lets him into the manor with a professionally-extended arm, and that’s how Tim knows Bruce is angry. It’s the little clues that remind him he lives with a potential psychopath, and, hell, he loves him—he really does—but the instant he catches sight of him he loses all energy in one fell swoop.

Bruce is sitting in that hideous gold-trimmed living chair with a glass of something hot sitting on the end table and his phone in his hand. He appears focused on the screen, but Tim isn’t stupid enough to think he doesn’t notice him walk in. Before the fingers can begin pointing, he offers what Bruce already knows with honest forwardness and little remorse. “Yes,” he says with the temperament of a jaded teenager, “I was with Jason.”

To his credit, Bruce manages to appear completely unruffled even though it’s obvious from his position that he is. “Tim,” he starts lightly, “I just want you to be careful.”

“I am careful,” he says, to no avail.

“I mean it. Jason’s dangerous.”

“It’s not like he’s going to kill me.”

“You don’t know that. He injured you when you two met.”

“He apologized,” Tim lies. Bruce analyzes his expression for a second, then reaches for his mug and takes a sip. Without meaning to, Tim curls his lip. “You mean a lot to him, you know. The only thing that’s wrong is that he thinks you hate him.”

“I don’t,” Bruce says sharply.

“I know that. He doesn’t,” Tim answers. Before he can contain it, the irritation seeps out, unbidden. “You talk about him like he’s some sort of villain, Bruce. Sure, he’s done some questionable things, but he _loves_ you and all you do is demonize him. I saw what happened when Dick left that week. I know you went and screwed everything up because you refuse to let Joker be dealt with.”

“Tim…” Bruce’s voice is a warning that the teen simply doesn’t heed.

“You don’t want to accept the fact that you two can have different ideas and still be part of a family,” he says, eyes narrowing and tone rising without his permission. In the background, he can see Dick creeping around trying to eavesdrop, and for some reason it pisses him off even more. “Dick, I’m not a fucking idiot, I know you’re there.”

“Language,” Bruce chides, and the frustrating calmness is what finally makes him boil over.

“Just because you’re an asshole doesn’t mean you can cut him out of your life. And, to that end, you can’t cut him out of _mine_.”

“Is there something going on here that I’m not seeing?” Bruce asks, setting the book aside and standing from his chair. Dick rushes in to try and pull apart the tension, but Bruce doesn’t accept his hand and takes a step toward Tim instead. “Because the truth is I think he’s up to something. I think he must be trying to distract you somehow, and it might be to take you away from me, too.”

“I can look after myself,” Tim hisses. “Being a total jerk to him isn’t going to make you any more of the good guy in this situation.”

Bruce’s shoulders slump. “I’m not trying to forbid you from seeing him. I told you, I only want you to be safe _._ I… I want Jason back as much as anyone, but I just don’t see that happening. There’s something wrong with him, Tim.”

“Yeah, there is,” Tim says, pitch rising with his mounting disbelief. “It’s that he thinks you’ve _abandoned_ him, Bruce!”

This time, when Dick curls a hand around Bruce’s forearm and looks at him, Bruce lets him slide into his space and lean his chin on his shoulder. Softly, he sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, using his other arm to wrap around Dick’s waist. “Okay,” he asserts, with some level of residual annoyance, “I see where you’re coming from. I know that things between Jason and I aren’t great, but that doesn’t mean I can place blame where it doesn’t belong.”

Tim softens too, offers a huff for posterity, and then mumbles a soft, “Thank you.”

Dick’s smile nearly halves his face at that. “You know what I think we should do? I think we should _all_ go out for ice cream tomorrow.”

The meaning of the word ‘all’ does not go unnoticed. Bruce sighs. Tim sighs. Dick continues to smile like an excitable puppy until Bruce suggests the café down the road from Wayne Enterprises, and by then Dick looks like he’s ready to climb him like a tree. “It’ll be great,” he promises, pressing a kiss to Bruce’s cheek with an audible smack. “Timmy, you’ll call Jason, won’t you?”

“What if he doesn’t want to come?” Tim asks, as if this could possibly dissuade Dick from being joyous at the prospect of an ice cream outing.

“Then it’ll just be us!” is the answer, and Tim and Bruce realize at the same time that there’s no way out of this one.

“All right,” Tim sighs, “I’ll call him.”

“Tell him we’d all like to see him,” Bruce says somewhat grudgingly, with a strange expression on his face that Dick sees fit to kiss away.

“Guys, ew,” Tim mutters, walking away with his eyes glued to his phone, leaving them behind to be disgustingly affectionate by themselves.

//

It takes a while to find a clear day in everyone’s schedule, but Jason miraculously agrees to come and Tim tries not to be cocky by hoping it’s because of him. Realistically it’s for Dick, who is the shining example of everybody’s favorite human and is somehow attracted to the grumpy old Bat, which is a puzzle even Tim hasn’t yet solved.

Right now, for instance, they have their chairs pulled close so that their knees touch, and Bruce with his black coffee and Dick with his mint ice cream somehow look so perfectly in love even without looking at each other that it makes Tim kind of nauseous.

And yet, when Jason’s voice appears from behind them, Tim jumps up like a grasshopper and starts babbling about getting something to split because he’s not really all that in the mood for the coffee here since it’s all just syrup anyway.

Jason, for his part, smiles amicably. He looks at Bruce and Dick, greets them with a reserved wave, which draws the latter out of his chair for a hug that Jason flinches back from but endures as he did last time with a grimace Tim thinks is supposed to be a smile.

“Hey, Dickie-bird,” he offers somewhat stiffly.

“Jay,” Dick returns pleasantly, his hands still clasped around his shoulders. “I’m glad you came!”

“I actually, uh, wasn’t planning on staying long.” The moment Jason says it, Bruce goes into detective mode, and Tim motions behind Jason’s back for him to keep his cool, which he reluctantly does. But then Jason puts on that glitzy grin again, wraps an arm around Tim’s shoulders and says, “I just came by to swipe up your Boy Wonder.”

Even Dick’s expression falls at that, and there are a hundred alarm bells going off in just about everyone’s heads but Tim is either too stubborn or too curious to say no.

“Jeez,” Dick says with a strange laugh, “not even gonna stick around for a coffee, eh?”

“Don’t worry ‘bout it, man, I’ll come see you guys some other time.”

“Okay! All righty,” Dick replies without emotion, stepping back to his seat at the café table. “See you soon, I guess. We miss you.”

Jason’s smile twitches, then goes tight-lipped. “I’ll drop by when I can.”

“Right,” Dick answers, and he and Bruce simply watch Jason steer Tim away from the table and around the corner, out of view.

As Bruce stews in his irritation, Dick lays a comforting hand on his shoulder and leans over to whisper in his ear. “Try to rationalize, B,” he says softly. “Remember how we used to be? All starry-eyed like that.”

This has the opposite of the desired effect, because Bruce looks at him with alarm and goes, “You don’t think they’re…”

Dick resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Um, yeah, I do.”

“I don’t like this,” Bruce answers automatically. “Jason has to be up to something.”

Dick sighs. “Come on, let’s just finish our date in peace.”

“Date?” Bruce parrots, and Dick laughs at the lack of awareness.

“Well, we’re all alone now, aren’t we?”

 _That_ seems to get Bruce’s mental processes going, because he smiles and mumbles something in his ear that makes his whole face goes red, and that was the end of that.

//

When they dive back into the bad part of the city, Jason makes Tim walk in front.

“It’s not like I don’t think you can defend yourself,” he explains, “it’s just that you don’t have all your fancy gadgets…and you’re awfully small.”

“I’m not that small. You’re just huge,” Tim replies with a bite of sass that makes Jason smile. “I’m stronger than I look.”

“I know,” comes the answer, and that seems to satisfy him until he notices they’re in a completely new area now. When he asks about it, Jason’s smile only gets bigger. “Where do you think we’re going? I thought you were supposed to be super smart or something.”

In the middle of Tim wondering who’d told him that, he realizes what Jason means. “No blindfold?”

“No blindfold,” Jason agrees. “I don’t expect you to go blabbing to The Bat, so…”

“What if I do?” Tim teases.

“I don’t know, maybe I’ll spank you,” Jason deadpans, then snorts and rolls his eyes. “I know you won’t, so it’s fine.”

“Fair enough,” Tim says in a funny voice, and Jason raises a brow at his flustered expression and then extends an arm toward a rickety-looking apartment complex. “Top floor,” he says, propping his hands on his hips. “Ready for the squalor? I know you’re used to living it up in Bat Country.”

Tim is the one to snort this time, and Jason takes that as his cue to lead them up the wrought-iron stairway to the second story and turn his key in the lock. When he invites Tim inside, the latter finds that it’s not nearly as bad as he thought it was going to be. It was a tiny apartment, sure, but it wasn’t just a studio and that meant something in a large city like this.

He supposes Red Hood makes better money than _this_ , but for one reason or another Jason doesn’t spend it on himself. Tim can respect that.

“Pretty shitty, eh?” Jason asks as he wanders into the kitchen and yanks open the fridge.

“Hardly. It’s not bad at all.”

“Hm. Thanks.” Jason pulls two beers out and shuts the door with his foot. “Want one?”

Tim hesitates, thinks about what he might need to do for school, then decides to throw one up to fate for once in his life. “All right, sure.”

“Are you even old enough to drink?” Jason asks with a smile that says he already knows the answer.

“No,” Tim says anyway. When he grabs for the beer, Jason dangles it just out of reach. “Oh, you do _not_ want to play this game,” he threatens with what he hopes is a dangerous inflection.

“Yeah, I do, Prettyboy,” Jason retorts easily, popping his own drink open with a thumb and taking a boastful swig.

“You’re such an ass.” Tim sacrifices a bit of his dignity to hop up and make a swipe at the bottle held aloft. He misses, and Jason laughs.

“What d’ya want me to say? You want me to say, ‘you are what you eat’? Is that what the kids are doing these days?” Tim embarrasses himself with an ugly snort-laugh and catches the bottle from Jason’s hand while he’s busy laughing at his own stupid joke. “Now, that’s not fair,” Jason comments while he directs Tim to the couch and plops down.

Tim takes the other end and pops the cap off his beer to take a drink. It’s awful, but he came to have fun, so he downs it like soda and Jason keeps laughing from where he sits. “Jesus, if you’re thirsty I can get you some _water_ , you know.”

“I’m fine,” Tim says, which is right when his diaphragm decides to start spasming. By hiccup number three he realizes he’s messed up.

“You know what helps that?” Jason passes him the bottle he’d barely taken two drinks from and grins. “More beer.”

That’s how they begin their evening—sharing drinks and laughing boyishly over dumb stuff on the television. Everything is perfectly fine for a while; Tim even finds the guts to scoot closer as the day turns into night, and by the time they’re done with the pack he’s all but leaning on him for support, and Jason just lets him rest his head against his shoulder and mumble about anything and everything he can think of.

It’s when he starts talking about the night they met that things start going south.

He’s managed to paw his way into Jason’s lap, which might’ve been the first thing to bring that worried look to Jason’s eyes, but Tim hardly notices in his drunken stupor and just keeps on babbling. “I told you the moment I met you it was like…something crazy.” He waves a hand dramatically as if this emphasized anything. “But y’know, it was just your eyes for a second. They’re so _glowy_ and stuff.” Tim doesn’t think he’s ever said ‘and stuff’ in a sentence before, but in this instant it’s all he can think of to say.

Jason offers a noncommittal laugh. “You’ve never drank before, have you? Like, at all?”

“No,” Tim answers quickly, and then keeps barreling into his retellings with a kind of focus he usually only possesses for work. “I’m serious, Jay.” It’s the first time he’s ever called him that, and Jason smiles all pretty at him and he really likes it so he says, “I like your freckles, like, when your nose scrunches up like that.”

The smile falls and then bounces back with more of an awkward appearance. Jason puts his fingertips on Tim’s chest and pushes him back just a little, but Tim doesn’t catch the hint until he’s got his mouth on Jason’s and the man under him goes completely rigid.

He’s only halfway aware of the way Jason’s hands finally find purchase on his hips, but then he turns his head at the same time and mumbles something into the empty space that Tim doesn’t catch and so asks him in an obnoxiously loud slur to repeat.

“Tim, as much as I’d love to do this—”

“So, do it,” Tim interrupts, inadvertently rolling his weight downward and causing Jason’s breath to catch in his throat. He decides he likes that, too, and moves to do it again before there are nails digging into the skin above his hipbones and Jason is looking torn and guilty beneath him.

“Tim,” he says again, “I am _not_ what you’re searching for.”

Tim starts to argue something in a hushed voice, and it hits him how _tired_ he is all in one instant. He’s comfortable too, though, and he enjoys the way Jason’s hands slide from his hips to his thighs and so he leans in to try and kiss him again, only to be stopped by a hand between them.

“God,” Jason says, a little more breathless than before, “I’d do it in a heartbeat if you were anyone else but that’s _not_ a good thing. I can’t do this to you, all right? I didn’t think you were being serious about all that. I can’t— Not when you’re _drunk_ and I _made_ you that way. Oh, Jesus, Bruce is gonna kill me.”

He takes a breath and tips his head back against the couch, and Tim is not exactly coherent enough to get what he’s saying, so he just says, “I’m tired,” and lets Jason take care of the rest. The last thing he remembers is that he’s sprawled out on a pair of mattresses on the floor, and the sheets are really soft and smell comfortingly masculine, and then he falls asleep faster than he thinks he ever has in his entire life.


	3. Chapter 3

When Dick gets a call from an unknown number during patrol, his first instinct is to panic. It’s pure luck that Bruce isn’t with him to hear the phone go off, because Dick knows he would be asking questions. He picks up with a curt, “Hello?” and receives Jason’s voice in return.

“Yo, Dickie,” he says in something disguised as casualness, “I need a favor.”

“What might that be?”

“Come get your bird.”

“My—” He pulls the phone away from his ear, looks at the screen like it will somehow help him decipher what that means, then suddenly comes to an understanding. “Is he okay? I swear, Jason, if—”

“He’s fine,” Jason says irritably. “Thanks for the presumption.” Dick stammers his way through something that ultimately doesn’t get heard because Jason’s talking again. “I’ll send you my location if you promise not to tell Bruce.”

He agrees automatically, because he doesn’t want to scare Jason off and because he needs to get Tim home. The promise is followed by a swift, “See you soon, Little Wing.”

There’s a pause, and then Jason chuckles. “God, yeah.” For a second, Dick thinks he’s going to say something profound or nostalgic, but what he gets instead is, “Take that nickname and shove it.” Then the line abruptly goes dead.

He shows up at the apartment twenty minutes later. When Jason pulls the door open, he looks perfectly assembled and Dick knows he shouldn’t be worried, but for some reason he still is. He pokes his head inside to look around, then glances back to catch Jason roll his eyes and step away to allow him past the threshold.

“Nice to see you,” he deadpans. It does not sound sincere.

Dick, for a moment, feels ashamed for his lost manners. “Um, hey. Listen, I’m sorry about being so…”

“Bruce-ish?”

He nods to the affirmative, peers down the hall, lets Jason lead him down it. But then he looks into the darkened bedroom and sees Tim completely unconscious, which is when the manners drop and the unshakeable suspicion returns. Abruptly, he pulls Jason back into the living room and regards him with arms crossed.

“That is a _really_ tight suit you got, Dickie,” Jason says, completely aloof. Or pretending to be. “I remember something more along the lines of a six-inch collar… You know, spangles…”

“Jason,” Dick snaps, and that shuts him right up. “Did you drug him or something?”

He scoffs once, then twice. “Wow. We had a few beers. Jesus, what crawled up your ass and died?”

“Why did you give him beer?” Dick asks, and it’s not even angry anymore, it’s just _tired._ Jason hates that infinitely worse because the disappointment it exudes worms its way under his skin and into his chest.

“We were just hanging out.”

“Did you…” At the same time Dick sighs, something cold and heavy burns in Jason’s stomach. “You didn’t do anything stupid, did you?”

That’s when he realizes that Bruce must have them all convinced he’s some type of devil, so he just bites back what he wants to say and saves it for the man himself. “No, Dick. I just want you to take him home so he gets back safely.”

Dick considers the message. Once he’s approved of its truthfulness, he nods and goes to scoop Tim out of the bed. He’s out cold, doesn’t budge, and _jeez_ Dick does not remember him being this heavy. All the same, he carts him to the front of the meager apartment and looks Jason in the eye the best he can through the domino mask.

“Hey,” he says, voice softer now, both with emotion and consideration for the sleeping Tim, not that he thinks he’ll awaken any time soon. “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to accuse you of…”

Jason purses his lips. “I’m sure you didn’t, Dick.” The way he says it makes Dick wonder if it was meant to be his name or a curse, but he doesn’t stick around to ask.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, then turns around and descends the stairs in complete silence.

Jason shuts the door behind him, locks all the locks one by one, and retreats to his bed with the intent of sleeping. What he does instead is inadvertently smell Tim on his sheets, lie in the dark, and reconsider how he’s been living his life.

//

When Tim wakes up, he’s in his bed at the manor but doesn’t remember how he got there. It occurs to him first that he shouldn’t have drank so much and second that he shouldn’t have done it in front of Jason, whom he’s quite sure either thinks he’s some gross pervert or, worse, wholly hates.

He gets out of bed at two, beating even Bruce on the front of rising the latest. Not by much, though, because he catches the man waddling around the kitchen while Alfred makes coffee and Dick stands by in Bruce’s robe again, presumably with nothing underneath. Except, of course, a hickey the size of Texas above his collarbone, which Tim kindly does not mention.

“Good afternoon,” Bruce greets. The statement seems insidious somehow, but he can’t quite place why and so offers a tired, noncommittal grunt to acknowledge he heard. When he preemptively grabs his favorite mug in hopes of beating the rest of them to the coffee when it was done, the innocent greeting finally comes to a head. “How was your time with Jason?”

Tim blinks bleary eyes and squints into his mug. “Good?” His head hurts, and he’s suddenly so thirsty he can’t think straight. “Water,” he vocalizes.

Dick starts to get him a glass, but Bruce has already moved on to the next question before any sort of healing measures can be taken for Tim’s poor, throbbing skull. “Is everything all right? You look a little paler than usual.”

“He looks fine to me,” Dick puts in, trying to defuse a situation that hasn’t yet escalated, but he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to try. “You’re fine, aren’t you, Timmy?”

“Sure, but my head hurts and I don’t remember what time I got home last night. Or how I got here, come to think of it.”

Dick pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs wearily.

“Have you… Have you been _drinking?_ ” Bruce asks sharply, and Tim finally gathers what Dick was trying to do for him.

“Ooh…um. No?”

“He gave you alcohol?” Bruce asks, voice flatter than before. “You went to his house.” It isn’t even a question now, and neither is the next thing he says. “You were alone at his house, didn’t tell me where that was, and allowed him to get you drunk in the middle of the night with no way home.”

Tim doesn’t appreciate the condescension. “Jason isn’t some monster. He’s just a guy.”

“A guy you’re not allowed to see anymore,” Bruce answers bluntly.

Tim feels a spike of something he hasn’t felt in a while, but it hits right where it hurts and it burns like fire. So much, in fact, that he finds he has to argue. “I’m not going to stop seeing him.” He keeps his tone even but he feels that the stubborn resolve shows through clearly enough, because Dick winces and Bruce takes a slow, deep breath.

“You see him again, you’re off Robin duty.”

“Bruce,” Dick starts, close to begging. “C’mon, let’s not do this right now.”

“Fine,” Tim snaps. “I’ll come back when I feel like it, then.” He’s the first to reach the coffee pot when it beeps, and he pours himself a cup with a sense of stubborn pride.

At least until Bruce’s frown deepens and he says, “No, Tim. I mean permanently _._ ”

Tim looks at him, knits his brows together, sets his mug down. “Bruce, we’re a team. You can’t just—”

“I can and I will.”

“Just because I’m doing something you don’t like—”

“It’s not just something I don’t like: It’s dangerous.”

“You don’t know that!” Tim runs a hand through his hair in exasperation. “You haven’t spent any time with him.”

“He won’t let me,” Bruce says, and his voice is rocky. “I’ve tried, remember?” There’s a long pause, during which Bruce looks from Dick to Alfred and then back again. It dawns on him that this is juvenile, so he relinquishes, but not without a heavy sigh. “Just promise me that if anything goes wrong, you’ll call me.”

Tim frowns, takes his mug, and sits beside the man. “Fine,” is what he says, but in his brain his thoughts are still going a mile a minute.

Bruce seems satisfied with that, anyway, and gets up to pour himself a drink as well.

When it becomes evident that the smoke has cleared, Dick and Alfred join them for breakfast, which would normally be the most fulfilling, mundane thing about Tim’s day, only now it feels as though something is missing. Strange, he thinks. He’s never felt quite like that before.

The feeling doesn’t leave him, not even during patrol that night. It’s an embarrassment to the team and to himself when he messes up during a fight and ends up on the ground with a masked woman on top of him holding a knife in his face. He’s got her arms held at bay, but before he can slip away, Nightwing steps in and kicks her off.

He’s usually pretty good at this Robin business, but tonight his thoughts are so bothersome that it’s unacceptable, even by his own standards.

Bruce puts a gloved hand on his shoulder and looks at him with a kind of seriousness that’s not quite Batman but _Bruce_ and says, “Go on. Nightwing and I have it covered.”

Even though he feels stupid doing it, he accepts the help and skips rooftops until he’s in Jason’s neighborhood again, in full costume to boot. The least he can do is drop by and apologize, he supposes.

He makes it up the stairs and runs, quite literally, into Jason on his way out of the house. It’s just more salt in the wound that Jason has to catch him from falling back and busting his ass, and so he’s already had far too much contact with the other’s ridiculously muscular chest than he’s strictly comfortable with tonight and pulls away with a sneer.

“Woah,” Jason says with a sideways smile, “what’s up, Boy Wonder?”

Tim starts to differentiate between “Robin” and _him_ but decides against it and instead replies, “I came to talk.”

Jason purses his lips, pointedly looks out over the railing, and hums. Tim follows his gaze to a beat-up F-150 with a redheaded man in the driver’s seat, smoke billowing out of his window that Tim is not entirely convinced is from tobacco. The man honks the horn, opens his door, and slides around the front of the vehicle with the most shit-eating grin Tim has ever seen on anyone besides perhaps Damian.

“Jay, baby, who’s your cute friend?”

In lieu of an answer, Jason fixes his eyes back on Tim. “I was just on the way out, actually.”

“Let me come,” Tim says before his brain can catch up to his mouth.

Jason scoffs. “Where we’re going isn’t really your speed. Bad boys only, y’know?” Here, he grins again and throws a wink his way, at which Tim grumbles.

Putting on his civil smile, he switches gears and says, “Afraid I’ll have more fun?”

“ _Jay!_ ” the man below calls. “Hurry the fuck up, fuckhead!”

“Shut up, Roy!” Jason calls back. He puts his hand on his hip and considers Tim’s stubbornness with a curious curl of his lip. “Listen, I hate it for you, but you really oughta stop hanging around here, okay?”

Tim takes offense to that. “Oh, Christ, listen, I know I screwed up last time—”

“I’m not mad,” Jason clarifies, holding his hands up defensively. “I mean, not at you.” A single second passes before he grimaces at the admittance. After a thought hits him, though, his expression brightens. It’s as though what he’s realized is simply too good to pass up sharing. “Okay. All right, you wanna come with us?” Tim nods. “You like girls, Timothy?”

He tries to throw off the initial shock of the question and makes himself lower his brows. “Uhh…yeah. Why?”

“You like guys?”

Tim frowns, crosses his arms. “Obviously.”

At that, Jason’s jubilance flickers into something bitter, but it’s short-lived and he’s grinning again anyway. “You got plenty of ones on you?”

He’s a little flabbergasted at that one. The laugh that comes out can’t be helped, but what he says next probably cements whatever idea Jason has in his head because the grin only grows more shark-like from there. “A strip club? Really?”

“If it’s not your thing…”

“No, no, I’ll come. Never been. Might be fun.” Tim grins right back with as much haughtiness as he can manage in a stature half the size of the man before him, but it seems to work because Jason furrows his brows and scoffs.

Despite his reaction, he does agree to let Tim come and ends up ushering him into the car of a man named Roy Harper.

Roy, he discovers, is not the most mannerly guy in the world. The instant he slides into the passenger seat, the man slings an arm around his shoulders and makes his first impression with the words: “You take cash, Doll-face?”

Tim opens and closes his mouth so many times in succession he thinks he must look like a stunned fish, and Jason isn’t helping things since he’s just howling with laughter in the back seat. “I… I’m not…”

“What? You’re not, like, some kind of performer? What’s with that getup then, man?” Roy winks at him, gets both hands on the steering wheel and then, blessedly, starts the car. “I’m totally kidding. Jay’s told me all about you. Red Robin, right? Like the burger joint.”

He picks up a cigarette from the ash tray and Tim is relieved to find that at least it _is_ tobacco he’s smoking, because he really can’t afford to be pulled over for anything illegal. “Um,” he says, and leaves it at that for a while.

Jason answers for him. “Yeah, that one. I swear I didn’t expect him. Especially not in the _suit_.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Timothy.” Roy flashes him a smile and Tim looks back at Jason with a scandalized expression.

“You told him my name?”

“Relax, baby,” Roy says, putting a hand on his thigh that Tim immediately blanches at. “I’m in the superhero gig too. You don’t recognize me? Y’know: Bow, arrows, sweet abs…”

“…Arsenal.” It isn’t a question. Tim did find him vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place why before. It’s not an enchanting discovery. “Yeah. Nice to meet you, officially, I guess.”

“Jason talks about you all the time, dude. As in, he never shuts up. Sometimes I think he wants—”

“Roy!” Jason exclaims to cut him off.

Tim hums. “Think what, Roy? Do tell.”

Roy laughs, but he doesn’t keep talking and instead switches on the radio. Since it’s hooked up to his phone, Tim doesn’t recognize any of the music, but it’s glaringly obnoxious and so perfectly Roy from what he’s already learned about him that he can’t help but snort at the predictability.

They drive for a while with Roy shouting more than singing the words to each song and Tim trying his best to pretend he wasn’t hating every minute because he’d _asked_ to go with them and had intruded on their plans as it was, so it wasn’t like he could complain. Still, he could see through Jason’s irritable bad-boy façade easier than he could a window, and he wasn’t about to let him win that game if he thought that was how he was going to push Tim away.

After a while he twists around to look at him, and Jason’s managed to sprawl out across the entire seat and is looking right back. When their eyes meet, he smiles. Tim does not.

“Second thoughts?” Jason asks.

“No, but I’d like it if you traded seats with me.”

“Too much Roy already? Don’t worry, that’s normal.”

“Hey!” Roy protests.

It’s the truth, but Tim says, “Actually, I just need to change into my regular clothes.”

Jason agrees and scoots to the left-most side of the seat to allow him room, which he graciously accepts, if only to get away from Roy, who’s somehow still singing at top volume despite the fact they’ve been driving for twenty minutes. It’s right in his ear and by this point he’s had far more than enough.

“So, where do you keep your regular clothes?” Jason asks as he turns his head toward the window and shields his peripheral vision with his hand. “It’s not like you carry a bag or anything. Frankly, the idea is driving me nuts and I’m not sure how to deal with that.”

Tim unzips his suit down the back and shimmies it off his shoulders, and while he’s contemplating whether or not to pull Jason’s leg, Roy looks over his shoulder.

“Hey!” he says, with some measure of surprise. “Dreams do come true!”

“Y’know…” Jason says with a sound between a cough and a laugh.

Tim, irritably, undoes his holsters. “Eyes on the road.”

Once he’s decent in the plainest clothes he owns, they’ve just pulled into a parking space and Jason is asking him something about hiding his clothes inside his suit, but he isn’t listening because Roy’s music is still horrendously loud and now he’s got the windows up and is filling the car with carcinogens, seemingly without a care.

Tim pushes the door open and slides out into the fresh air with a gasping breath.

“Drama queen,” Jason teases.

The trio enters through the double doors and makes a beeline for the bar.

Everything inside the place is decorated with flashing neon lights, including the barstools, and Tim can feel his retinas burning within the first thirty seconds. The only thing more annoying than that is the smell, which is half sweat and half stale beer, and he can’t decide which to complain about first. While he’s thinking about it, the bartender approaches Jason and Roy with a friendly smile. Unsurprisingly (or not; Tim can’t tell), she greets them by name.

“Been a while,” she adds, setting an arm on the counter and leaning her weight on it. “What’ll ya have?”

“Sazerac,” Jason says.

“Piña colada,” Roy says.

“Gay,” Jason says.

“Yeah,” Roy says.

When the bartender looks at Tim, her smile becomes accusatory. “Are you even old enough to drink, kid?”

“Allie, chill out. I wouldn’t bring a fuckin’ kid in here,” Jason says with a harsh voice. “What do you think I am, stupid? Yes, he’s old enough.”

To Tim’s shock, Allie buys this. She starts pulling out bottles and only pauses to ask him what he wants to order.

“A beer,” he answers, because that’s the only thing he’s ever really tried except champagne, and he didn’t guess this was the type of place at which one ordered champagne.

“Domestic or import?”

“Import.” He doesn’t know what the difference in quality is, if there is one, but he’s taking a note from Bruce’s book and doing things foreign. Usually, it makes him look more cultured, but this time he’s not sure it works.

She’s already pouring one of their orders when she asks, “Modelo or Blue Moon, baby?” He’s surprised she can hear anything at all past the music and the clinking of glass, but he parrots one of the names back at her and watches her pull a bottle from underneath the counter. “And here’s your Sazerac,” she says as she slides Jason’s glass toward him.

By the time she comes back with Roy’s, which looks like a work of art complete with a pineapple and cherry skewer, Jason’s already cleared his in one gulp.

“Another?” Allie asks.

“Nah,” Jason replies. “Just gimme another of those imports.”

He swipes the proffered beer and turns toward the other two men with a mischievous look. “All right, party time. Girls or guys?”

Roy unsubtly looks at Tim. “Guys.”

Jason nods. “Timmy?”

Tim’s indifferent response brings them to the men’s side, where they find a cluster of chairs orbiting an end table to park. It’s not close to the stage, thank god, but it’s closer to the bathrooms than he might have liked. Pointedly, he takes a long drink. Maybe he can manage a buzz that will make this experience somewhat fun. He doubts it, though.

Mostly, they just talk for the first thirty minutes of being there. That’s all it takes to get pleasantly drunk, though, because they’re sucking down round after round of drinks like they were cups of water and getting vocally louder with each passing second. When Roy’s fourth piña colada comes by, he stretches over the end table and extends it toward Tim. “Take a sip, Doll-face,” he instructs. “You’ll love it.”

Though Tim objects to the nickname, he does try the drink, which he finds far more enjoyable than what he’s been having. “Oh,” he comments, surprised, “I want one of those.” Roy chuckles at that, and Jason mutters something about not corrupting him too much, as if they’re not in a room surrounded by men in thongs and cheap costumes.

Amazingly, it does start to get fun. For the most part he’s fascinated by some of the tricks the dancers onstage manage to do, and even though Roy spends a lot of time cooing compliments about his looks into Tim’s ear, he still finds a way to enjoy the time. It’s funny for a while, but then Roy’s hand is on his thigh again and he has to hiss a threat to get him to stop. The impish smile, paired with an insincere, “Sorry, baby,” does little to help.

Finally, Jason intervenes. “Quit it, man,” he says, swiping the drink out of his friend’s hands to take a sip. “You’re being obnoxious.”

“You’re just jealous you’re not the center of attention this time,” Roy says.

“Well, I _am_ hotter than him.”

The two share a laugh, and everything is good for about thirty seconds, because then Roy ruins it by putting his hand back in Tim’s lap and leaning into his personal space. “He totally doesn’t mean that,” he slurs. “He thinks you’re _fiiiiine_.”

“Roy,” Jason starts in the same irritated tone from before.

“I’m getting tired of waiting for him to make a move, though, because I really wanna—”

“ _Roy._ ”

“I’m just saying, baby,” he presses on, though it’s unclear if he’s talking to Tim or to Jason, “it’s been a long time since I got laid.”

It seems to just now dawn on Jason that Roy is legitimately (albeit drunkenly) trying to make a pass at Tim, because he slams his drink down on the table and kicks him in the ankle. “Could you come here a second?” It might have been a question, but his tone leaves no room for a negative answer, so Roy picks himself up from his seat and follows Jason into the restroom. As an ode to his obvious lack of self-control, he still throws a wink and a smile in Tim’s direction before disappearing.

“Moron,” Tim mutters. He’s less concerned about that than he is about the fact that Jason is unmistakably jealous, though, and no amount of horrible flirting could wipe the victorious smile from his face.

Despite the location, Tim is surprised when a man in costume approaches him for a dance. His first instinct is to say no, but that’s before he spots Roy’s wallet laying out on his seat and the wicked part of his brain begins to kick in. The drunk part fumbles with words, but the cash he hands the man is clearly answer enough.

Tim had not pictured his day going this way. Against all odds, it still manages to get stranger.

While the man is giving Tim his money’s worth, he smiles curiously and asks, like he’s seen a million faces and knows every single thing that could be going through his head, “What’s wrong, baby?”

Tim momentarily forgets where he is again and reflexively goes, “Don’t call me that.” He’d been called ‘baby’ enough times for one day, anyway. “Please,” he adds, as an afterthought.

“What do you want me to call you?”

There’s a momentary war in his head between his shame and his pathetic, drunken lust, before he answers with a bitten lip and the word, “Prettyboy.”

“You’ve got it bad,” the dancer says all-knowingly. But it’s what he’s here for, so he pours himself into Tim’s lap and whispers the name into his ear, and it’s when the voice does very little for him that he realizes how _right_ he is. “Let me guess: It’s one of those fine young gentlemen you walked in with.”

Tim is astonished that the man had seen them at all, but it’s not like he cares and so he answers with what he’s sure is a definitive, “No.”

The man only laughs. “Honey, you’re a terrible liar.”

Instantly, he deflates. “Oh, god,” he whines, “what do I do?” He isn’t sure when drunkenly rambling at exotic dancers became his go-to, but the man looks at him with a sideways smile like nothing could surprise him and it makes Tim feel weirdly safe.

“You could always try to make him jealous. Tried-n-true…”

Tim grins stupidly wide. “I dunno, I think his friend’s already onto something with that one.”

The man laughs again, and it’s such a sweet, jingling sound that Tim doesn’t even care if it’s just for the money because it’s _cute_ and he’s _drunk_ , so he just laughs along and fishes for more bills. Presently, Jason and Roy reenter the area, which Tim only knows has happened because the latter shouts a loud, suggestive cheer at him and he can hear Jason telling him to shut up after the fact.

“It isn’t _that_ one, I hope,” the man in his lap says. Tim doesn’t know why, but he laughs again. He doesn’t know when everything became so damn funny.

“No. Jesus, no.”

The man laughs with him again as he takes the money. When he leans in to kiss Tim on the cheek, he glances back at the other two and winks, and Tim’s barely in his own head when he asks with measured nervousness, “God, does he look mad? You think he’s mad at me? You think he’s mad at _you?_ ”

Again, dainty laughter is the only response, and like each time before it, he just laughs along. Alcohol, he thinks, is a lot like Joker gas—only a whole lot worse.

Or maybe that was the _love._

//

Jason watches from the corner of the room with crossed arms and a tight frown. Briefly, he considers getting another drink, but at the risk of doing something he’ll regret, shuts the idea down before it can fully wriggle its way into his already vulnerable system.

He watches until it makes him angry enough to look away. “You think he’s doing this to piss me off?”

Roy shrugs. “Who cares? Unless you’re trying to date him, I could care less.”

Jason is silent for a long, incriminating space of time while he stews, and as hammered as Roy is, he isn’t stupid. “Oooooh…jeez,” he says with a pitying tone that Jason loathes.

“Couldn’t,” he says quickly, to stop the words from coming out of his friend’s mouth. “It’s ‘couldn’t care less,’ Roy. If you’re going to be a sloppy drunk, at least try to have half a brain.”

“Mocking me isn’t gonna help the fact that you’re diggin’ on Drake. What ever happened to that other guy you were telling me you liked? Weren’t you, like, seriously head over heels in love with him or something?”

There’s another pause. Roy makes an even longer _ooh_ ing sound than before, and Jason continues to seethe, even when there’s a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Look, dude,” Roy says with a suddenly serious voice, “if I’d’ve known _he_ was the guy, I wouldn’t have hit on him, stupid.”

“Just use some common goddamn sense, Ro—I mean, look at them!” Jason cuts himself off just to gesture dramatically at Tim and the built blonde invading his space. “What’s he over there saying that makes them best friends now, huh?”

Roy, the bastard, laughs right in his face. “Babe, I think he’s doing it on purpose.”

“If he is then it’s your fault.”

“How the hell is it—”

“Look, the guy’s leaving. You know what? Two can play that game.”

“Jay, what are you, thirteen?”

“Shut up and kiss me.”

“Excuse m—”

“We’ve done it a million times, chill out.”

“Uh, yeah, that was before—”

The conversation stops, and time seems to as well, because one moment Tim’s wobbling drunkenly away from his chair and catching Jason’s stare and his plan is working, but the next, Jason and Roy are attached at the mouth and the former’s got a hand wound into his hair like he knows just how to do it and has done it a million times before.

Tim doesn’t hide his disbelieving scoff. He’s not sure whether to be mad or crestfallen, but the alcohol won’t let him pick and he dives headfirst into one emotion, then the other, then back again until it’s all just an endless loop of misery. He knows he’s not entitled to anything, knows he shouldn’t have intruded on their night, but it still hurts like hell and he’s out the door into the cold before the other two even break apart.

Roy puts a hand on Jason’s chest and pushes him back a step. “Woah, dude,” he says, slurring but serious nonetheless, “I’m usually on the receiving end of this insult but, um… You’re an idiot.”

Jason hates that he’s right. It doesn’t make him any less annoyed, though, so he ignores everything else Roy is babbling at him and heads for the door to flag Tim down across the parking lot. He has to jog to catch up because, somehow, Tim moves faster than a damn flea, but when he reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder, it’s immediately shrugged off.

“Tim,” he begins with a tired kind of resignation. “Tim, Jesus, slow down.” When he doesn’t, Jason employs plan B. “At least let me drive you home. You can be pissed all you want when you’re not out in the middle of Date-Rape City.”

“I can take care of myself, remember?” Tim hisses with venom. “Don’t try to act all heroic. I get it—you wanted to prove you’re a big, scary asshole or what the fuck ever and you _did,_ so fuck off. I got the point.”

“That wasn’t what I was…” Jason sighs, stops himself because it _was_ what he was trying to do, but now that he’s had too many drinks and Tim is walking away from him with his arms around himself under a million shitty, neon lights, he thinks it’s the stupidest idea he’s ever had. He knows he’s got it bad when he admits defeat with an apology, and that at least gets Tim to stop and face him, although he looks no less angry. Jason wouldn’t expect him to be.

“I appreciate it,” Tim says, honestly, “but it still sucks. I get it, you don’t want me. You could’ve just said so before I went and made an ass of myself.”

“I, err,” is what Jason puts out, brilliantly, but then Tim starts walking again and he does something he rarely does: He panics. “Okay, okay, wait! Let me drive you home. Look, car’s right here.” He gestures to their left, and Tim thankfully pauses to consider it.

There’s a long silence, but at the end he’s rewarded with a sigh and a soft, “All right.”

Tim doesn’t think too hard about why Jason has the keys since it’s Roy’s car, but he lets him open the passenger door for him and slides in, watching him do the same on the other side. When the door closes and the car comes on with a much-needed burst of heat and a much-less-needed burst of loud music (which he dutifully turns down), Tim finds himself relaxing into his seat.

The lack of conversation isn’t so bad with the music in the background, but it’s still awkward. Jason does a number of things in succession: He reaches for a cigarette, rolls the window down, changes his mind and rolls it back up; he fiddles with the stations until he finds something more or less tolerable; eventually, he just drums his fingers on the steering wheel. Though he goes through all the motions, he doesn’t actually ever put the car in drive.

“Jason,” Tim says, and it’s so gentle and forgiving that Jason wants to slam his face right into the horn and die on the spot with guilt. “I’m sorry for freaking out. It’s not like I ever said anything, and it’s stupid to…to…” His brain short-circuits in the middle of this and he gives up with a groan and a repeated, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Jason answers. He feels like he should say more— _knows_ he should—but he just can’t manage the words right now. He leans back, hooks an arm around Tim’s headrest, and subconsciously leans in a little closer.

“Isn’t this Roy’s car?” Tim asks out of the blue.

Jason doesn’t know why, but he chuckles. “Yeah, it is.”

“Aren’t you drunk?”

“A little bit, yeah.”

“Mm.”

“Mm.”

And then Tim leaps forward to close the gap between their mouths and it’s like everything’s less wrong. Jason cups his hands around Tim’s jaw, pulls him closer like he needs this to breathe and tries not to think about whether this will be the last time Tim will let him do it, because _god_ he wants to do it again but he knows when he’s fucked things up; he’s no stranger to that.

But, then, Tim is responding with enthusiasm, and it surprises him when he slides over the console and into Jason’s lap. The back of his head is pressed against the top of the car and it can’t be comfortable, he knows, but Tim just scoots down closer to him and he can accept that as a valid way of combatting the problem.

He’s more than thrilled with what he’s gotten, but Tim seems to have no intention of stopping. There’s a brief internal struggle he has where he wonders if he should be letting it happen, but then Tim’s got his tongue in Jason’s mouth and that kind of throws the argument out the window.

Tim grinds his hips downward with a jerk so sudden it gets Jason to moan, and when he does that Tim is hell-bent on making him do it again.

It’s going much better than he’d anticipated, but that was before there was loud banging on the driver’s side window that scares both of them nearly out of their skins. “Holy—” Jason begins to say, but it’s cut off when Roy jerks the door open and all but cackles at the predicament in which he’s found them.

“Goddamnit, Jay, not in my car.” He takes a step back and motions for them to get out, which they do. Tim tries to avoid Roy’s knowing grin and Jason just accepts it with a fist-bump.

Roy climbs into the driver’s seat and doesn’t seem at all offended when the other two occupy the back. “All right, hold on,” he begins seriously. There is a long pause, and Jason and Tim manage to keep their hands off each other that long, but then he says, “Who turned my radio station?” and they’re all suddenly laughing like they can’t stop.

Miraculously, they make it back to Jason’s apartment in one piece, and Roy waddles in to crash on the couch for the night in a less-than graceful fashion. He’s snoring, clothes and boots on, before the other two can even parse how to get Tim home.

Finally, Jason gives up thinking about it and says, “We can just share my bed.” Then, shortly after, “If you want.”

“I’d like that,” Tim answers at length.

“Don’t like it too much,” Jason says, ruffling his hair. “We’re drunk and I’m not that shitty.”

“That’s fine.” Tim stretches his limbs and yawns loud enough to wake the dead, but Roy, predictably, does not stir.

They’ve only barely undressed—just shimmied out of their jackets and jeans, really—when they crash onto the mattress, and even though Tim’s tired down to his bones, he finds that he can’t fall asleep. He expects Jason to be out cold, but a nudge to the arm proves him wrong.

“Mm?” Jason asks. His voice is quiet, yet too loud in the darkness of the bedroom.

Tim considers what he’s about to say, then throws caution to the wind and just blurts out the first thing that pops into his head, which is, “Why were you trying to scare me off?”

Jason groans like he’d been afraid of the question. He turns onto his side to rest his chin atop Tim’s head, and for a second the latter swears his heart stops. “Well,” he begins, “I was… I kinda still _am_ …afraid.”

“Red Hood isn’t afraid of anything,” Tim asserts matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, well, _I_ am. Just of…screwing you up.”

“I’m not a child,” Tim argues with a huff. “We’ve discussed this before.”

“I know.” Jason stops, sighs, repeats: “I know. It’s just that I’m not exactly the world’s most upstanding citizen.”

“So?” Tim pulls back to give him a quizzical look.

Jason is frowning thoughtfully, but eventually deems it all right to admit what’s really been on his mind. “I like you,” he offers, which makes Tim brighten, “but I’m not sure I wanna deal with everyone else. Well, you know, Bruce. I can’t exactly waltz into the manor like it’s home again and expect him to invite me in with open arms.”

“No,” Tim agrees mildly, “but he still loves you, and we have all the time in the world.”

Jason considers this in silence. Finally, he drapes an arm over Tim’s waist and drags him closer. “You’re smart, you know that?”

Tim snickers. “Yeah, I do.”

“Good,” Jason says.

Funnily enough, they’re both asleep within seconds after that.


	4. Chapter 4

When they come to, there are about a dozen messages on Tim’s phone and Roy has taken off with the rest of the alcohol in the fridge.

“Jerk,” Jason mumbles, but that’s before he spots the takeout on the bottom shelf with a heart drawn on the bag and rescinds the insult.

Said bag plops down on the table in front of Tim, who discovers within seconds of smelling food that he’s absolutely ravenous, and it takes all of three seconds before they’re both shoveling forkfuls of cold food in their mouths with the TV playing one of Roy’s shitty pop stations on low from where he must have left it on that morning. Or afternoon, Jason realizes when he looks at the clock and finds that it’s already three p.m.

Tim comments, idly, “I don’t think I’ve slept so long in years.” Jason doesn’t know why, but it makes him jump, and Tim notices, because of course he does. “You all right, Jay?”

He thinks briefly about saying the exact words on his mind, which are, “I’m not used to sleeping with someone who’s still there in the morning.” After a second of mental recalibration, he decides against that and what he actually says is, “Y’know, I like the way my name sounds comin’ from your mouth.” Tim hates that the words make him pink up to his ears but they do, and Jason’s smirking now like he has any right. “But,” the latter says before Tim can compute a worthy insult, “you know what I think would sound better?”

And Tim’s headache doesn’t stop him from adopting the cheekiest tone he can manage and responding, without inflection, “‘Oh please, Jason, give me more’?”

He’s been beaten at his own game and he knows it. “All right, you win,” he returns evenly, but he looks pretty pleased with himself, nonetheless.

“You’re an idiot,” Tim says without malice.

Jason doesn’t answer and instead swings an arm around his shoulders to pull him in close. He yawns dramatically, but it’s after the fact and Tim can’t help but smile. “So, what?” he asks. “Is that your way of asking if I’ll fuck you?”

“You’ve got a dirty mouth,” Jason comments as he leans forward to swipe his drink off the table.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Tim says, and the drink is promptly abandoned. Suddenly they’re a pile on the couch with Tim on his back and Jason all but leering down at him.

“Prove it,” he says.

“Mm,” Tim says contentedly, wrapping his arms around Jason’s shoulders and dragging him down into a kiss.

It doesn’t take him long to _prove it_ , and he swears with his hand on the Good Book that he’s going to hear more of the way Jason moans his name if it kills him.

//

It’s nearly dark when he returns to the manor. Luckily, Bruce is at some Wayne-sponsored charity event, so it’s only Dick and Alfred he must deal with when he comes back with a series of aggressive bite marks all the way down the side of his neck.

Alfred, for one, is used to this and simply sighs in passing, only pausing to offer a prim word of advice: “Concealer is in the main bathroom, Master Drake.”

Tim wants to point out that he’s way whiter than Dick, but when he gathers that it’s Bruce’s he goes even whiter. “Oh, god,” he mumbles, at the same time Dick strolls in, completely unaware of their brief encounter.

As he tends to do, he reaches out to fluff Tim’s hair but pauses halfway through the motion.

“Yes, I know,” Tim hisses before a comment can make it past the other’s lips.

It does not stop him. “Hooooly shit, Tim-Tam. We let you leave to fix things but not _that_ well.”

“Shut up,” he groans. He tries to push past him, but Dick is stubborn and shows no sign of letting up. He even follows Tim into the kitchen, where he’s beginning to dig around for coffee despite the hour.

“Did you… Did you two…”

“No,” Tim answers curtly. “I don’t ask about _your_ sex life and I’d really appreciate it if—”

“I’m just curious,” Dick defends. He’s leaning against the island, trying to act casual. “Because, I mean, if I need to go kick his ass…”

Tim can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of the comment. “I’m not twelve,” he offers as he pulls the coffee grinder toward himself and begins twisting away. “I can defend myself for one thing—I’m not sure why no one seems to think I can. For another, it was completely consensual.”

Dick grins with all his teeth. “Oh my god, you _did_ sleep with him.”

“I did _not._ ”

“But you fooled around,” Dick says, and at that point he knows he’s got him pinned. Tim snorts, dumps the grounds into the filter, and starts the pot. He says nothing, and so Dick pokes a finger into his ribs like he’s three and not thirty and coos playfully at him. “Oooooh… What happened? I gotta know. If you tell me, I’ll tell you all about how Bruce and I first—”

“All right, all right,” Tim interrupts. “If you promise you will not tell me about yours and Bruce’s sex life, I’ll fill you in.”

“Fair enough,” Dick says victoriously.

Tim crosses his arms, shuffles his feet, tries not to make eye contact. “We were drinking.” Dick frowns, so he amends: “We fell asleep after that. No funny stuff. But we wake up the next morning and we’re eating takeout and listening to music and shit…”

Dick is regarding him now with a strangely wistful expression, and Tim tries even harder not to look at him, even goes the extra mile to put his hand up and shield his face. “I was kind of flirting with him—”

“Awww,” Dick says. Tim groans again and he shuts up.

“I mean, it just sort of turned into us making out on the couch and then I—” This time when he’s interrupted it’s by the front door opening and closing, but after a long lull in the conversation where no one enters the kitchen, they guess that Alfred must have been sweeping and keep on. “Well, first I sucked him off, and then—”

“Please tell me I did not just hear that,” Bruce says wearily as he appears in the doorway. Tim nearly keels over on the spot and Dick launches into a bout of laughter. The former covers his face with both hands and groans for a third time.

“Well jeez, Mister Sneaks-Around-Without-Saying-Anything…” Dick jabs.

“It’s part of my job,” Bruce says. Despite his intrusion upon the less-than-stellar conversation, he doesn’t seem especially perturbed.

“Really?” Dick asks with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

Bruce hums and grabs a coffee mug from the shelf above him. Tim is grateful that the conversation has switched gears, and even more so that drinking coffee at seven p.m. was commonplace in their household.

Just when he thinks he’s off the hook, though, Bruce pours himself a cup of coffee, takes a dainty sip, and casually says, “I at least hope he returned the favor.”

Tim honestly wants to sink into the floor and disappear.

//

It’s during patrol the following night that they run into Jason again, in full armor and looking none-too-kindly for it. Despite this, an olive branch is extended.

Tim and Dick look at each other with brows raised, because the fact that Jason holds his hand out first is not only a major improvement but a genuine shocker. Bruce shakes it, and Jason takes a step backward. For a moment it’s silent, which isn’t unusual in and of itself; it’s the fact that Jason hasn’t moved yet, hasn’t fled the scene. The reasoning seems to get through Bruce’s skull after a while, and the wordless pact is made when the next string of police cars speed by and The Batman drops down to pursue, with all of them following closely behind.

Fighting alongside Red Hood seemed peculiarly familiar, even though neither Tim nor Dick had done it, and when Bruce had last there was a bit of a difference in personality.

There was no dialogue for the rest of the night, as none of them could think of anything particularly meaningful to say. The actions spoke louder, anyway.

Tonight, patrol runs late—or, rather, it runs early. The sun is just on the horizon when Bruce finally collects his crew to return home, and that’s when the silence is finally broken. Unsurprisingly, Dick speaks first. “It was nice seeing you again, man.”

Jason salutes him. Bruce grumbles something in agreement to the statement, and it surprises him more than it does Dick or Tim when Jason extends his hand again. “I’ll be back,” he says, and Bruce actually smiles. It’s strange to see in the cowl, but it brings Dick crashing into Jason’s back to wrap them in a hug, which Tim begrudgingly joins.

“Oof. I changed my mind,” Jason jokes.

Dick laughs and lets them go. “See you tomorrow. Well, actually, I guess it’ll be tonight!”

//

They do, in fact, see him again that night. It’s just Bruce and Dick this time, though, because Tim’s swamped with homework and is combatting the usual bout of insomnia. Though he argues against the verdict, Bruce is un-budgeable and he honestly doesn’t think a break sounds too bad.

It’s when he finishes all his work and Bruce and Dick still aren’t home that he finds time to rest. Sometimes, he forgets how much he loves his bed.

He doesn’t wake up until he hears the door unlatch. There’s one more set of footsteps in the foyer than normal, and Tim tries not to fling himself out of bed like he’s fourteen and going to see his first boyfriend. It doesn’t work quite as well as desired, but no one’s there to see it and when he’s decent and finally arrives they’re all engaged in animated conversation, anyway.

Jason’s got his hood tucked under one arm and is laughing at something Dick is saying, and Bruce is standing aside with arms crossed but a pleasant smile on his face. Tim likes the look of it, especially when Alfred arrives soon after to offer the group drinks and to lay a hand on Jason’s shoulder. Tim tries to remember why he thought Bruce wouldn’t welcome Jason back with open arms, because it sure looks to him like he has.

It takes a minute, but Jason eventually does notice he’s there and flashes him a grin. Then, suddenly, he _is_ fourteen again because his heart skips a beat and he can feel his face going warm at the suggestive smile Dick is aiming in his direction.

Jason slings an arm around Tim’s shoulders when he approaches and gives him a squeeze.

“Not planning on taking off with him again, are you?” Bruce asks. Tim thinks it might be a joke—he can’t be sure because there is no laugh or smile, but this is perfectly normal behavior in his case.

Jason shakes his head. “Nah. He’s got, what? Multiplication tables to do?”

Tim scoffs. “Right. I finished all my schoolwork a couple of hours ago, actually.”

Dick grins. Bruce raises knowing brows at Jason, who frowns. “See?” the first says at last. “You don’t have to go now, after all.”

“I don’t, uh…” Jason clears his throat, tries again. “I’m not playing chess and drinking chai all night, or whatever you old folks do around here.”

Dick shoves him playfully, then opens his arms in a gesture of invitation. “What do you say?” he asks, and Jason chews his lip before he slowly comes to an agreement.

“Sure, I’ll stay—but only for a little while.”

If Tim were the type to have dreams this lucid, he might have pinched himself to make sure this was actually happening. As it stood, Bruce seemed to have the same feeling, because he makes a soft noise of disbelief and flounders for words before he eventually gives up and just says, “Wine?”

“Oh, yeah,” Dicks agrees emphatically. He gets a hand on the back of Bruce’s neck and pulls him into a kiss, then beats him on his mission to the kitchen before Bruce can use it as an excuse to disappear. Obviously, he’s been tricked, because he looks very put-off and is systematically curling and uncurling his fingers at his sides.

Jason isn’t faring much better. He’s looking all about the place, humming a nondescript tune until Tim gets so tired of it he nudges him toward the other man. Jason sighs, sets his hood down, and finally speaks. “Bruce. I, err…thanks for letting me swing by.”

Bruce sighs in what sounds like relief. “It’s my pleasure, Jason. I…we missed you.”

Jason halfway smiles, mumbles something about needing a smoke, and excuses himself to slip out the back door and onto the porch. When the door clicks closed behind him, Tim lifts a brow at Bruce and says, “He’s happy to be here.”

He hopes it’ll make him feel a little more at-ease, but to his surprise, Bruce says, “I would hope so, since he’s the one who asked to visit in the first place.”

Tim’s eyes go wide at that, and before he can help it he’s smiling like he’d been gifted a puppy or something equally as exciting. “No way,” he says.

Bruce, deadpan, replies, “Way,” and Tim finds himself laughing just a little too hard.

Dick returns with Alfred in tow, who bears a tray of half-full wine glasses. When Tim reaches for one, Alfred swats his hand away with a sneaky sort of smile. “That one,” he says lightly, “is for me, Master Tim.”

“Oh, come on,” he complains. Dick only snickers at him and Bruce simply sips at his glass, so with a dramatic feigning of mournfulness, he leaves them to their chatter to go fetch Jason for the party he can’t attend. “Knock knock,” he says, surveying the languid way Jason blows smoke and glances over his shoulder at him.

“Hey,” he returns evenly. “What’s up, Prettyboy?”

“They want you for wine.”

“Gross,” Jason says, but stubs his cigarette out nonetheless and follows Tim through the French-style doors to rejoin them. He lifts his glass in a toast along with the rest of them, and that’s when Bruce points from the lone glass still on the tray to Tim, who furrows his brows.

Bruce snorts. “Alfred was kidding, Tim. Go on, one glass won’t hurt you.”

Tim accepts the offer, and Alfred smiles like he’s just pulled the world’s best practical joke. “Yeah, yeah,” Tim tells him fondly. “Very funny.”

They spend the next two hours in increasingly comfortable companionship, sitting around the fireplace exchanging stories from all the missing years until it ends with a drunk Dick practically clinging to Jason, sobbing about how glad he was for him to be back, and a weary Bruce dragging him away for bed.

“Jason,” he says, seriously, “you’re welcome here any time. I hope you know that.”

“Thanks, old man,” Jason says, and despite the jibe it’s completely sincere. He gets up and swipes imaginary dust off his pants, but Alfred shakes his head before he can even think about taking a step toward the door.

“Absolutely not, Master Jason.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You’re certainly not driving home after all that wine.”

“I’ve had three glasses,” Jason says flatly. “And I’m walking.”

“That’s even worse!” Alfred objects. “Under no circumstances will I have you _walking_ through Gotham at this hour.”

“Don’t you guys have, like, twenty cars?” Jason asks with a defeated sigh. It was no use arguing against Alfred, and every single one of them knew it.

“Well, _I’m_ not driving you,” the man says, and that puts a pin in it with ease. He grabs the tray of now-empty glasses and offers them all a smile and a curt goodnight, in turn.

Bruce carries more than walks Dick to his bedroom, and that leaves Jason alone to pout and Tim to scheme with his bottom lip between his teeth. It’s suddenly so dark and quiet in the room that the butterflies in his stomach only get worse, and that’s well before Jason actually looks at him and chuckles. “Not sure I like the look on your face,” he teases. “Not plotting my assassination for sneaking up on you in your house, are you?”

“No,” Tim replies with a breathy laugh. “Actually… Um.”

“Actually, um” doesn’t even begin to cover what he’s thinking, but Jason looks at him with the same sort of grin he wore when they first met, and Tim doesn’t even _have_ to say anything else because the message has already been communicated. He wonders, briefly, if he looks that desperate to anyone else.

Jason tugs him forward by the hips and ducks down so close that Tim can feel his wine-sweetened breath on his face. “You promise The Bat won’t castrate me?”

Tim hums, puts his hand on the back of his neck like he always sees Dick do to Bruce and pulls him the rest of the distance into a kiss. They break apart and Jason leaves his eyes closed for a second. When he opens them again, he says, “That doesn’t really answer my question. Like, I’m really fond of my balls, Tim.”

They laugh at that while Tim leads him into his room with perhaps more energy than he should have at this hour, but Jason doesn’t seem to mind and in fact follows him down onto the bed without complaint. It’s not until he’s got one hand down Tim’s pants and his mouth latched to his neck that Tim remembers he should lock the door. He doesn’t think Bruce would come bursting in, but he didn’t want to risk it, either.

“Oh,” he manages to get out in a puff of heated breath, “uh, door.” Eloquent, he thinks.

Jason takes care of that, sits back down, and toes his boots off. “So, hey.”

“Hey?”

“You’ve, like… Have you, err, _done_ this with a guy before?”

Tim finds it immeasurably hilarious to see Jason so uncharacteristically nervous, but he bites back his laugh and bobs his head to the affirmative. Jason gently pushes him back onto the bed and straightens only to lift his shirt above his head. “All right,” he says, “color me surprised.”

“You’re still an ass,” Tim offers with what he’s mortified to call a giggle.

“You just seem kinda uptight,” Jason replies. There’s a pause of reconsideration, and then he tacks on an earnest, “No offense.”

“Ass,” Tim repeats matter-of-factly.

“I’m not gonna argue with that.”

Tim’s cooking up another smart-ass remark when Jason interrupts his thought processes with a hungrier kiss than before, which leads him to find that he’s suddenly at a loss for words.

He’s not sure how long they spend only kissing and touching and panting into each other’s mouths, but he knows that after a while, he’s impatient with the foreplay. To prove it, he yanks the other’s pants down to his knees and Jason just laughs as he moves to shimmy them the rest of the way off. “You’re cute,” he says.

“Are you tipsy?” Tim asks with a measure of humor in his voice. “What happened to ‘only three glasses’?”

“I haven’t eaten much,” he admits. “Shut up.”

They fall back into one silhouette with a comforting kind of ease. Jason’s grip on his hips is strong and Tim feels suddenly and achingly like he’d unravel without the stability. What he thinks is slightly more poetic than what he says, which is little more than an emphatic curse, but Jason gets the hint and moves on from just holding to something a little more substantial.

It’s embarrassing that Tim takes so little stimulation, but he’s never been with anyone either half as attractive or experienced as Jason, who’s only been fingering him for about five minutes now and is smiling appreciatively at the damage he’s managed to do already.

“God,” Tim complains, red-faced, “quit looking at me like that.”

“All right,” Jason agrees easily, and Tim’s surprised by the complacency until there’s a mouth on his cock and he realizes with a start that Jason’s just being Jason, as usual. They’ve done this part before, but that doesn’t stop Tim from having to to physically jerk him back by the hair to delay his fast-impending release, all the while drawing in gasps of breath that remind him how weak he is at this sort of thing.

He doesn’t do much better when Jason climbs back up his front and presses a kiss underneath his ear, then on his jaw, then on his mouth. They break apart to look at each other, but then Jason’s reaching down to unzip and is pushing into him and Tim doesn’t think he can keep his eyes open for more than a second at a time because _Jesus,_ it had been a while and he hadn’t really thought about that. At any rate, he feels fine and lets a soft sigh to signal such.

“Full disclosure,” Jason says, interjecting a deep groan that gets Tim’s blood pumping faster, “I’ve wanted to tear you apart from the second I saw you.”

Tim gasps out the words as Jason’s rolling his hips experimentally, but he’s sure he gets his point across. “Thought you hated me.”

“I did,” Jason admits. “But if I only fucked people I _liked_ then, well… Actually, I’m gonna shut up now.”

Tim laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. “Have I told you that you’re an asshole?”

“No?” Jason smiles down at him. “Don’t think I’ve heard that one before.”

And it’s only in the space of a second from the next kiss that he’s actually fucking him and Tim is gripping the rails on the headboard and cursing more colorfully than he thinks he does even when he’s losing his video games, which is impressive.

Somewhere in the mix, he huffs Jason’s name and that works like a charm: Jason all but gathers him into his arms like he wasn’t a five-foot-ten adult with considerable muscle but something closer to a doll, and Tim just lets him, sinks his nails into Jason’s shoulders, tips his head back and moans out of sheer necessity because he honest-to-god can hardly take it and is falling apart in his embrace.

Jason mutters a soft, “ _Fuck,_ ” and without even thinking Tim lets his brain autopilot his body into wrapping his legs around the other’s back. The curse is repeated with more vehemence, which pleases him.

The autopilot carries him from contented moans into something more guttural when Jason shifts his angle, and Tim has to bite his hand to muffle the sounds. The first one’s out without warning, though, and it’s a somewhat shameful shout of Jason’s name that he crosses his fingers wasn’t heard by anyone else in the manor.

“No, no, I like that,” Jason says with a predatory kind of grin. He’s not making it easy, and it doesn’t help that he’s practically breathless and letting little moans of his own slip over his tongue and Tim especially can’t take _that_.

“They’ll hear,” he protests weakly.

Jason chuckles privately at a thought, leans his head down on the pillow next to Tim’s and just fucks him harder like the bastard he is.

He’s not sure what to call the frustrated grunting sound he makes when he pushes himself up on his elbows and makes Jason lift his head again, but the message translates when Jason looks at him, takes in what must be a perfect wreck of a man with his mouth open in a little ‘o’ and his eyes half-lidded.

He chants a brainless mantra of, “God, god, god,” and Jason understands plainly what that means and curls his fingers around his cock without a word.

That does him in, and there’s a somewhat humiliating wailing sound he makes when he cums, hard, against Jason’s front.

The manor is large, so he sincerely begins praying for the second time that night that the rest of them are out cold and can’t hear a thing.

He’s never felt so fucked-out in his life, so when he collapses back onto the pillow with a shaky moan, he barely registers that Jason has pulled out and is now fisting himself through his own orgasm, and he can only appreciate the face he makes for a second because Jason throws his head back and grunts through his release.

Now they’re both dirty and panting, and Tim can safely say what he’s been wanting to without sounding like he’s just saying it for the sex. “God, I think I love you.”

Jason laughs once, lowers his head again and just looks at him until his breathing calms down. “Yeah? Maybe I love you too, a little bit.”

“Does this mean we’re dating?” Tim asks, and Jason just laughs again.

“Christ, I don’t know. I guess?”

Tim hums approvingly at that and stretches an arm toward him. It takes a second, but Jason concedes to the motion and lays down with him. “Have we _been_ dating?” Tim asks after they’re tangled in a gross mess of wet limbs and sheets, but Jason’s too busy threading his fingers through his hair and staring into the distance thoughtfully to notice.

It scares him for a second until their eyes meet again and Jason’s crinkle at the corners in a genuine smile. The question hardly matters, anyway, when he tells him he loves him without joking this time, and doing so pulls the words from Tim’s mouth so naturally and effortlessly he wonders why he doesn’t say it every time they’re around each other.

What he says after that is calculated. “Does it feel good to be home?”

Jason lays curled against his back for a long stretch of silence. Eventually, with a raw sort of honesty, he says, “Better than I thought it would.”

Tim counts that as his own personal victory and twists around to bury his face in the crook of Jason’s neck. “I’m glad,” he says, and he means that for more reasons than one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it! Happy Valentine's Day!! <3


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